


That Which Was Lost

by DrJekyl



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Post-War, Rebuilding, indoctrination
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 22:36:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 111,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrJekyl/pseuds/DrJekyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Benezia T'Soni survived the events of Noveria, but spent the entire war in stasis. Revived in the wake of the Reaper's defeat, she now has to adapt to a galaxy where her homeworld is in ruins, her former bondmate is her unhappy minder and her daughter is a stranger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:**
> 
>   * Firstly, a very big thank you to everyone who's had a hand in this fic, particularly jt-boi, who took on the unenviable task of beta-reading much of the piece, and the asari headcanon enthusiasts on tumblr (you know who you are). Another big thank you goes out to everyone on the kmeme who's been following this since the beginning and providing such wonderful (and useful!) feedback.
>   * Secondly, this work comes with the following content advisories: 
>     * Non-con overtones and themes (because I don't think it's really possible to look at indoctrination in general and Benezia's situation in particular without at least touching on that)
>     * Violence, including domestic violence
>     * Depictions of mental illness, including aliens with something akin to PTSD
>   * Thirdly, this a kmeme fill, but one that rather took on a life of its own. The version on the meme ([this prompt](http://masseffectkink.livejournal.com/4309.html?thread=10103253#t10103253) is more advanced, but the version here is a bit more refined and has some differences.
> 


Liara allowed herself a little more than a week, in the end. Two days to simply sleep, another three to heal, one to mourn and the rest to hover by Shepard's bedside, half an eye on the various medical monitors while she worked, trying to pull together what remained of her network and make some sense of the ruined galaxy. Not even two weeks, and even then it was more than she could afford to spare. Events were moving forward apace, faster than her ability to plan for them, and the few reports that had come in from the Republics were troubling, to say the least. By rights, she probably should have been aboard the first vessel bound for Thessia the moment she'd been capable of walking again.

Leaving now, though, meant that she wouldn't be there if- _w_ _hen_ Shepard woke up. But she needed to go, and go now. Liara had a duty to her people as well as to Shepard, and she'd do far more good organising things on her homeworld and lending what support she could to their friends than she could ever hope to whilst hovering over a hospital bed. Leaving was the right thing to do, no matter how traitorous it felt. Shepard would have to understand. She knew about duty. She'd know that Liara had hated to leave her.

But even with the teary, wordless farewell behind her, there were still one or two things that needed taking care of before she could set foot upon the world of her birth again. This was one of the last of them, and easily proving to be the most difficult. She'd hidden in the ship's small cabin in dread of it, silly and childish though it was, until now. She, who had defeated the Shadow Broker, had summoned Kalros, had charged down the crater towards the beam of light and certain death, _afraid_? It was ludicrous. But then again, she'd always been much better at taking action than dealing with other people.

"Gilsame? Why are we detouring to Gilsame?" Aethyta said, checking the navigation database on the small freighter Liara had not so much requested as demanded the Systems Alliance loan her. Being one of the now-legendary Normandy crew had to have a few benefits, she'd decided, to go along with what remained of her clout at the Broker. "Two days out of the way for a ball of radioactive ice _pirates_ wouldn't bother with."

"We need to collect someone," Liara allowed, hearing the tension in her own voice.

Aethyta heard it too, and gave her a hard look.

"One of your 'agents'?"

Liara was not certain exactly how much Aethyta knew about her activities, only that it was more than she'd let on and certainly much more than she'd relayed to the other matriarchs. Beneath Aethyta's direct, temperamental manner sat a very sharp mind, and she'd certainly hinted, more than once, that she found it extremely unlikely that at Liara and the Shadow Broker had put aside their conflict in order to focus on the Reapers, no matter the 'official' story.

"No. They will- I..."

She wrung her hands nervously together as she looked at her father. Liara had quickly come to genuinely like her other parent, but didn't know her anywhere near well enough to judge how she'd react to her news, and she really needed to win her over for this. In the end, she decided to plumb for blunt honesty. Plainly-spoken as she was, Aethyta would have to appreciate that, at least.

"There is no easy way to say this," she said, ignoring the way her heart hammered in her ears, "so I'm just going to come out with it."

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and only then did she dare meet her other parent's eyes.

"Mother is still alive."


	2. Aethyta

Aethyta Argyris, matriarch of the asari, spy, saboteur, inadvertent hero of the Citadel and the best damned bartender this side of the galactic core watched as her youngest daughter worked the controls of the stasis pod and tried to sort out exactly what she, herself, was feeling. Anger? Yes. _Hell_ yes. Pissed off didn't even _begin_ to cover it. It had taken all of her not-inconsiderable willpower to stop herself from smacking the kid so hard that she'd have thought Aethyta was Kurinth herself, descended from the heavens to kick the blue from her ass. The nerve, the goddess-damned _nerve_ of her, sitting on a secret like that, lying to her face about it. Two days later and she was still simmering.

And, damn it, she was still plenty angry with the kid's mother too. Forgiveness had come one hell of a lot easier when she'd thought Benezia dead. 'Time heals', 'cherish the moments together' and all of that varrenshit. The unexpected revelation of Benezia's survival and further realisation that she was going to see her former bondmate again had brought a lot of things she'd thought long-buried back to the surface, few of them pleasant. Anger, resentment, hurt, dread-

Dread?

"Are you sure that this is a good idea?" she said, giving voice to the last thought. "I mean, after what happened..."

"Honestly?" The kid paused momentarily in her work to look up and over at her. Her good eye sparkled in the dim lights of the freighter's cramped cargo bay. "No. I'm not. She made a mistake. A big one. And we don't really know anything about the long-term effects of indoctrination." Liara sighed and laid her hand gently atop the stasis pod, before returning to her work. "But Shepard believes in second chances. So do I."

Aethyta couldn't quite help the dismissive snort that escaped her.

"You're about the only ones."

"I know. And that's why I need you. I need someone who knows that it was Saren and Sovereign who did those horrible things, not her."

And that, right there, was why, despite her anger at the pair of them and everything else besides, she'd ultimately agreed to go along with this harebrained scheme. At least for a little while. Nezzie was a victim here. She'd done a stupid, if well-intentioned thing and gotten herself in over her head with no-one standing by to pull her back out again if it went tits up. Which, of course, it had. But Benezia, at the time, had no way of knowing what Sovereign truly was or was capable of. Hell, the handful of people who'd even been aware of its existence back then had thought that it was just some sort of overgrown dreadnought, and Saren just a Spectre a little more off kilter than most of that breed, wanting to use geth to rule the galaxy.

Geth. Huh. If only it had actually been _geth_. Geth would have been a fucking cakewalk compared to the Reapers, what with their twisted monsters and mind control.

She sighed and moved over for a better look at the pod, her footsteps swallowed up by the crates and containers of the supply stockpile they'd spent the day shifting here from the bunker. The pod was an older model, medical, the sort used by a better class of merc companies to keep wounded soldiers alive until they could be properly seen to. Compact, with few bells and whistles aside from the enhanced power supply, but all the more robust because of it. The scratched windows on this one had fogged over during the transfer from the tiny bunker on Gilsame to the ship, rendering Benezia little more than a pale blue blur beneath them. Aethyta wiped her hand across one cloudy panel; it came away damp, with a slight squeaking noise.

"You never gave me a straight answer for why you did it."

The kid went still for a long moment, hands motionless at the controls. The uneven lighting in the bay cast dark shadows across her face as she bowed her head.

"The last shot was mine," she said, finally, quietly.

Oh. Crap. That little detail hadn't been in the official report, or the unofficial one either. She knew from personal experience that losing your parents at such a young age could fuck you up pretty good for a few decades, but shooting, _killing_ your own mother - it was the kind of thing that could scar you for life. A little bit of her anger towards the girl drained away.

A little bit.

"I didn't mean _that_ ," she replied awkwardly, feeling like the mother of all heels, but pressed on anyway. "I can understand _saving_ her. She's your mother. But why keep it a secret?"

Liara shrugged, a subdued movement, and returned once to work once more.

"At first we thought we might be able to, I don't know, figure out exactly what had happened to her. How to help her break free permanently and stop it from happening to other people. But nobody believed us about the Reapers, even after they attacked the Citadel. An unimaginable invasion fleet waiting in dark space? Mind control? It all sounded so... fantastic." She shook her head slightly. "With Saren dead, the Council would have used her as a scapegoat. More than they did anyway. She would have been publicly tried as traitor and imprisoned. Maybe even executed. And she still would have been under Reaper control throughout. I... I couldn't do that to her."

The kid finished the last of the diagnostics and looked back up at her.

"Everything's green," she said. Her voice held and odd mixture of satisfaction and concern. "Are you ready?"

"Well," Aethyta sighed and cracked her knuckles, "I guess I'd better be."


	3. Benezia

"You know, for someone so smart, you always could be so damned stupid. What the blue hell _were_ you thinking?"

It took a few seconds for Benezia to open her eyes and focus on the figure seated at the end of her bed, straddling a chair backwards, watching her impassively. It took several more to put a name to the face.

"Aethy..?" she said, startled when her voice came out as little more than a rusty whisper. Goddess, she felt absolutely dreadful. She ached everywhere, her side and stomach worst of all. Her mouth was like sand, her eyes and throat raw and scratchy with each slow blink and breath. All strength seemed to have left her limbs. And her head. Goddess, her _head_.

"You remember who I am. Well, that's a start, I guess. Do you know who _you_ are?"

"Of course," she rasped, puzzled by such an odd question, especially coming from Aethyta. And... yes, that was wrong, too. What was Aethy doing here? They weren't... They hadn't... "I am Benezia T'Soni, Matriarch of the asari and..." _Tool, servant, plaything_ a dark, unctuous voice within her supplied. Her head started to pound with force. The room swam, nausea rising in her stomach. "...and..."

Aethyta frowned.

"Hmmph. Do you know how you got here then?"

"I..." Her shaking hand flew unconsciously to her temple as she struggled to pierce the fog roiling inside her mind. The room was unfamiliar. Barely furnished and small, cramped with just two occupants, the square metal walls suggested 'ship', and not one of asari design. How had she gotten here? She could remember... "I... was on Noveria. The rachni queen. I... needed to find the Mu relay. There was a battle. I was trying to..." Her hand dropped as the memory reached its conclusion. "Goddess, Liara! She was-"

Aethyta's expression shifted from cool distance into something approaching compassion.

"Relax - the kid's fine. Well, maybe not one hundred per cent _fine_ , but she's alive, anyway, and that's more than most can say. She'll be here in a bit."

"She... knows?"

She'd always meant to tell Liara about Aethyta, but had never been able to find the right words when Liara was younger. Eventually, to Benezia's guilty relief, the girl had stopped asking. And then, later, when she'd thought Liara might be old enough to understand something of love in all of its aching contradictions, they'd fought, all but stopped speaking. Liara had enacted her quiet rebellion, as all maidens must eventually distance themselves from their mothers, and she had reacted... badly. It was obvious with hindsight, and some part of her had even realised it at the time, but, despite all her years, despite all her supposed 'wisdom', she had been hurt by Liara's desire to leave her, and terrified by the prospect of her shy Little Wing going out into the dangerous galaxy on her own. Liara was her only daughter. She would always want to hold her close, keep her safe.

Her only daughter.

She had tried to kill her only daughter.

"Yeah, she knows," Aethyta was saying. "She's a smart kid. But that's not the issue here. Look, we know that the Reap- that Sovereign was fucking with your head."

The name sent a finger of dread and revulsion down her spine. Sovereign. Saren's ship. But not just a ship, something she'd discovered far too late. So many dead, so many used, herself among them.

Her pride. Her blindness. Her fault.

"We know that you fought him too. Broke free, even. But we need to know what the damage is. If you can be trusted again. We don't have a lot of experience in dealing with people who survive indoctrination to the level you had it. Most of 'em died in the war, or offed themselves straight after."

"War?" The word cut through her rising revulsion at herself. She'd been trying to prevent a war. Somehow. That's why she'd gone along with Saren. Another finger of disgust shivered its way down her spine. "What war?"

Aethyta sighed, heavily, suddenly looking all of her thousand-odd years.

"It only ended a couple of weeks ago so it doesn't have a proper name yet. But the long and short of it is Sovereign's buddies showed up and the whole galaxy went to hell. I've never seen anything like it." She shook her head slowly, almost as if in awe. " _Conservative_ estimate is we've lost two thirds of the galactic population. The batarians are pretty much done for as a species and we might not have enough elcor left for a viable population either. And, well, our people are only a bit better off. Some of the smaller colony worlds seem to have come through ok, but Thessia..."

Benezia stared at her in open-mouthed horror. But the shock of Aethyta's words was enough to finally kick her brain into some semblance of action. She could remember being shot on Noveria, quite clearly. The pain of it had been enough to break Saren's hold on her again. She'd felt herself bleeding out, sliding down towards darkness, and had begged them to let her pass on before the monster claimed her once more. But then Liara had been at her side, begging her to stay while two armoured figures worked with clumsy haste to slather her wounds with medigel...

A war of the scale Aethyta was talking about would take time. Years. Time enough for Liara to find and meet her other parent. But when Benezia touched her side, now, above the bullet wound, the skin was still raw and tender. If she'd been unconscious, in a coma over the intervening period, she would have healed.

"How long have I been in stasis?"

"Four years. Or there abouts. But don't think about that now. There's going to be a lot to take in. You'll need to work up to it slowly."

"Four years?" Her voice, to her own ears, was incredulous. Two-thirds of the galaxy, gone in just four years? That seemed hardly time enough for a war of that scale. She'd seen visions of the devastation that Sovereign and the monsters had caused before, but even so...

She blinked, and one of the visions Saren had gifted to her flitted behind her eyes.

_Out in the darkness of intergalactic space, the great fleet sat, each ship a nation unto itself, alive and malevolent and unstoppable. One by one they woke; one by one suns darkened, worlds burned, races died._

But there was a way for them all to survive this cycle. Saren had found it. He'd shown her: surrender. Pride was not worth the price.

"And Saren?" she heard herself ask.

"Dead. You actually have our girl to thank for that." Aethyta smiled, some of the age dropping away from her face again. "You did a good job with her."

"I can only agree, really," a new voice chimed in as the door slid open, a voice she would know anywhere. Soft, breathy, slightly hesitant...

Liara.

There was a lengthy pause, the three of them frozen in tableau.

"I'll leave you two to it," Aethyta eventually said, with a tact most would be startled to learn that she possessed. "I bet you've got a bit to talk about."

Benezia watched silently as her daughter carefully maneuvered her way into the small room and past Aethyta, a laden tray clasped in both hands and a datapad tucked under one arm. She looked, to a mother's eye... different. Older. More than four years would suggest. Gone were the soft, subdued contours of youth, replaced by the full figured body of a maiden in her prime. Darker skin. Better posture. New, hard muscle beneath... armour? She'd taken it for a new work uniform at first, but up close it was clearly a ballistics weave with solid ceramic plating, well-used, well-fitted and likely custom-made.

And her face... Goddess, her _face_.

Almost the entire right side of her daughter's face was a mess of raw scar tissue, bisected by a thin, diagonal band of untouched skin across her cheek. Below the band and across the line of her cheekbone to her nose, the skin was puckered and pitted, drawn tight enough to pull the corner of her mouth up slightly. The same scarring continued under her jawline and down the front and to one side of her neck. Worse, though, was the area around her eye, a single, livid, indigo burn extended halfway up her forehead. She wore a simple fabric patch, white, over the eye.

"She's not what I expected," Liara said, watching the door close behind Aethyta.

"What did you expect?" she heard herself ask. Her voice was remarkably level.

"Someone more like you, I suppose." Liara shrugged slightly and turned back to lay the tray down carefully on the small shelf beside the bed. She then sat upon the edge of the bed itself, rather than seeking out the so-recently vacated chair. "Hello, Mother."

When their eyes met for the first time, Benezia suddenly felt the full weight of her shame and looked away.

Her daughter, her dearest Little Wing. She had tried her best to kill her. It had seemed the only logical course of action at the time. Worse, far worse: a part of her could still understand that logic, feel the echo of frustration at the Spectre's continued interference in their plans and the rage that the human thought her weak enough to be swayed by ties of blood.

"Mother, please."

When Benezia allowed herself to look back up again, there were tears in her daughter's remaining eye as she spoke the words.

"Liara..." her throat was suddenly tight, tears blurring her own vision. "Goddess, what happened..? I didn't-"

Her trembling hand drifted up of its own accord to cup a scarred, mangled cheek, fingertips brushing the eyepatch. What little remained of Benezia's heart broke when Liara's right hand came up to cover hers, and she realised that the little finger of it was gone, along with the tips of the next two, scarring to match her face and neck down the back of her hand until her skin disappeared beneath a suspiciously new section of armour.

"No. This was Harbinger's work. The burns will heal eventually, and there are prosthetics these days that are even better than the real thing. In the meantime, it will certainly teach me not to wear a proper helmet," Liara said with a tight smile that only fully moved one side of her face, and drew their hands away. "I've missed you."

"And I you," she replied, letting the tears fall. How close had they come to losing each other? "Liara, I-"

"Later, Mother," her daughter interrupted gently, squeezing her hand. "How are you feeling? Honestly?"

How was she feeling? Oh, what a question to ask...

"Thirsty," she supplied, deliberately focusing on the physical. "Weak."

"Any pain?"

"Some. My side." She tried to sit and winced, and then Liara's arms were there, helping her up. "My chest."

"I am afraid that we had to put you into stasis straight out of surgery. We couldn't risk you waking up of your own accord. You were shot three times. The areas around the wounds will be tender for a few more days," Liara said apologetically, arranging the pillows behind her so she could settle back. The next question from her, though, when it came, came sharp, and without any apology whatsoever:

"And how is your head?"

"My... head?" The pain was excruciating, flaring with each slight movement of her body. "There is some discomfort."

She felt her gaze drop, a little, at the half-lie. Her daughter had always had a good heart; if she knew the extent of the pain, she would certainly want to help alleviate it. But a headache was such a little punishment for all that she had done and tried to do, and Benezia would seek no relief from it. She deserved _something_ for living when so many others had not.

"Mother, look at me," Liara demanded. Benezia was startled enough by the unexpected note of command in her voice that she obeyed all but instantly; their eyes, the same shade of blue, locked.

"What happened with Saren was _not your fault_ ," her daughter said firmly. "You had no way of knowing what Sovereign really was and what it was capable of. Indoctrination is... insidious. Most people fell completely under its sway without even realising it. But _you_ recognised it. You fought it with every fibre of your being. And I am... proud of you for doing so."

Proud? How could Liara be proud of her? She had done terrible things. Unspeakable things. She had led her followers to the slaughter. She'd killed. She had forcibly violated the minds of others. She had worked against her people. _She had tried to kill her own daughter_.

Her stomach churned, bile rising in her throat. There was too much to forgive for any sort of pride in her.

"But, even with the Reapers gone," Liara continued, apparently heedless of her inner turmoil, "we can't be sure that you're completely free of their influence yet. We don't know enough about how indoctrination works, and what the long-term effects on the survivors are. If we are going to get through this, you _must_ be completely open with me. And Aethyta. We must know if you have headaches, see visions, hear humming or voices, or feel the urge to do odd things."

The headaches had been the first overt sign of their downfall. Dear little Umbri, the youngest of her entourage, had been struck down by debilitating pains in her head that lasted for days. The rest had followed, in ones and twos, over the next few months, herself last of all. She remembered, at the outset, being concerned by the spate of sudden illness. She'd even considered using it as an excuse to abandon her mission and leave that horrible ship and its dangerous master behind, but had shrugged the feeling off once the pains had proven only temporary. And besides, all of the afflicted had been so certain of the importance of their mission, insistent on staying...

But had that been her or Saren who had decided that they should stay? Had she unwittingly doomed them all in her arrogance, or had she already been under the sway of the monster, even then? Either way, they were all dead now, her followers. She had killed some of them personally, taken by fits of rage and nihilism. The lives of the others may as well have been taken by her hand as well.

"It was not your fault," Liara repeated, gently, when she didn't reply, and squeezed her hand again.

"But it was, Liara," she heard herself whisper, gaze falling to her lap. "Goddess, it was. I should have known better. I should-"

Her fragile resolve finally broke when Liara drew her into a hug, holding her tightly. Tears came again, hot and fast, tremors wracking her body as she clung to her daughter for support.

"-I'm sorry. I'm so sorry..."


	4. Aethyta

"How'd it go?"

The kid shrugged as she took up the co-pilot's seat.

"Better than I had expected. Not as well as I'd hoped," she sighed. "Did she say much to you?"

"Not a lot. But then, she didn't have to," Aethyta conceded, taking the opportunity to study the kid out of the corner of her eye. Behind a set of scars that would have made Aethyta's own father incredibly envious, she seemed tired. Upset, but working not to show it. "You alright?"

"Fine, I suppose," Liara sighed, rubbing unconsciously at the scars on her neck. "It's just... difficult, seeing her like this. She was always so strong and confident. She's sleeping now. I've rigged up a monitor, in case she wakes and we're not there."

"Hmm," she acknowledged, fishing beside her own chair for the bottle and two glasses she'd had the foresight to store there earlier. Benezia had always been strong and confident, but in an incredibly understated, grounded kind of way. It was part of what had made her so damned sexy, back when they'd been together. She had brains and power enough that she didn't feel the need to flaunt them. Asses were great for passing glances, and tits could get you a fair bit too, but confidence would always be the galaxy's number one aphrodisiac.

She hadn't seen much of that confidence in freighter's small cabin. In more than a century of being together, Benezia T'Soni had become an open book to her, and all she'd seen, writ large across her face, was confusion, fear, pain and burgeoning self-loathing. None of that boded well for the next few days.

Aethyta deftly poured two glasses and offered one to the kid, who took it without a word. If she'd missed all the other warning signs, that would have been a clear enough signal that something was amiss. The kid wasn't much of a drinker, even socially, more the sort to sit and nurse a single glass of wine for half the night. When upset, she worked rather than self-medicated, a trait she shared with Benezia. It was only when there was no work to be done, or when work itself was the problem, that she turned to booze.

Liara took a cautious sip, brows arching in surprise before a hint of a smile ghosted her lips.

"What, no ryncol?"

So Liara T'Soni had a sense of humour about her heritage after all.

"Nah." She returned the smile with one of her own. "I'll let you in on a little secret, kid: I never much liked the stuff."

"Really? And here I thought you were 'half-krogan'."

"Yeah, but I got my mom's sense of taste, and rycnol's one step below prison moonshine. Besides, when you work in bars and clubs for as long as I have, and you learn to appreciate the good stuff."

"I don't know much about alcohol, but this is quite nice. Sweet but spicy, at the same time. What is it?"

"One hundred-fifty year-old Niacali metheglin," she took a long, slow sip from her own glass and sighed with satisfaction. "Nothing better. I've been saving it for a special occasion."

"'Saving it'?" Liara asked dryly. "I was under the impression you managed to escape from the Citadel with nothing more than your shotgun and the clothes on your back."

Caught out in a little lie, Aethyta shrugged, and took another pull, savouring the sweetness, the spice and the burn. The frantic fight and subsequent flight from the Citadel was not something that she particularly cared to remember. With C-Sec utterly overrun by Reaper troops, she'd done what she could to assist – and then organise - the civilian evacuation. A lot of people had died in the chaos, a lot more than she'd been able to save, and the survivors had called her a hero for it. Just because she was old enough to know how to keep her head in a crisis, and had a loud, authoritative voice.

"Well, I _did_ have a bottle I was saving," she said. "It's in orbit somewhere now. I might have 'liberated' this one from an abandoned bar on Earth."

The kid made a slightly disapproving 'tsk' sound, but took another, longer sip anyway.

"So, this counts as a special occasion?"

"Well, the war's over, we won, and we're finally on our way back to Thessia," she said, ticking each point off on one of her fingers. "I don't know about you, but I'm inclined to drink to all three."

"And I suppose it is a family reunion, of a sort."

She couldn't quite stop the scowl that formed as she stared down into her half-empty glass. You couldn't have a family reunion if you'd never been a family.

"You're still angry with me." It wasn't a question.

"Of course I'm still angry!" Aethyta shot back, letting it rise back to the surface again. "We talked about her for _hours_ and you didn't say a damned thing. You didn't even _hint_."

"What was I supposed to say?" Liara replied, her own anger evidentially rising. "'Oh, and by the way, she's not actually dead?' I'd known you for a few weeks at most. And you were _spying_ on me for the _asari government_! How would they have reacted to that news, exactly?"

"It would've gone down like a drunken elcor," she allowed. "But that doesn't make me any less pissed off about it! You shoulda told me."

"Perhaps," Liara conceded, settling back. "And maybe I would have, if we'd had more time to get to know each other."

"If 'ifs' were butts, it'd be raining asses," Aethyta groused, knocking back the rest of her drink too quickly for something of such quality. "'If we'd had more time'. 'If there wasn't a war on'. If Benezia hadn't-"

"You still have feelings for her," Liara interrupted quietly, with rather more insight than Aethyta would have liked.

"Yeah, and they're not all good ones," she shot back, anger flaring again.

Every asari of a certain age had at least one story of a relationship that had ended too quickly for comfort. She'd eventually come to accept that Benezia would be hers, and had tried to content herself with the memories of near-on a hundred and twenty years together. Benezia had left her, and she'd let her go. That was where the story should have ended. There was too much history between them now for anything else. Too many unsaid words, too many angry thoughts and too many broken promises.

"Look, I don't know what sort of twisted fantasies you've got up in that little head of yours, but we're not here to play 'happy families'. Once we're certain she's still all there upstairs and not going to try to bring back the Reapers or do something else that stupid, I'm out. I've got my own business to attend to. Is that clear?"

Liara looked down into her own glass and sighed.

"Crystal."


	5. Benezia

Benezia T'Soni lay staring silently at the ceiling in the darkened room. She was alone save for the hum of the ship around her, and the slow, reassuring rhythm of Aethyta's breathing as she slept in the cot beside the door.

She had eaten and drank and slept herself, for a time. Physically at least, she felt all the better for it, the dull aches of her body subsiding, though the pain in her temples was only a little diminished. A shower had been promised in the morning, along with a reprieve from bed, and she found herself honestly looking forward to both. She felt unclean, as if her skin crawled with filth, and, bound to bed, she had nothing to do but think. And remember.

_"Can't you see?" said Saren. His taloned hand gripped her shoulder tightly enough to draw blood. "Surrender. Cooperate. It's the only way we can survive."_

"Yes," she said, covering his talons with her hand, ignoring the pain, the intrusion into her personal space, and instead reached for his mind with her own, past the jagged edges and strange echoes and frantic whirl of thought into the unshakeable certainty beneath. "I see."

And she did.

She shuddered and fumbled at her side for the datapad Liara had left for her, flicking it on so that she was bathed in the glow of the small screen. With the extranet apparently inaccessible, the only content on the device was preloaded and sparse: a timeline of the war of sorts, starting just prior to her arrival on Noveria, and some associated codex entries, dossiers, news reports and vid clips. Limited, certainly, but it was at least a distraction, and some bridge to understanding her current situation.

She was three years dead, and a traitor.

While the former had come as something of a shock, she hadn't been particularly surprised by the latter. She _was_ a traitor. A criminal and worse. But _dead_? How were they now to explain away the fact that she wasn't?

The lie had been told skilfully, and often enough that even her fellow matriarchs believed - that, at least, was evident. In the relevant interviews, editorials, speeches and analyses included on the device, she would have seen some signs, subtle ones, that they were laying the groundwork for her eventual return, be it for imprisonment or, less likely, exoneration. She saw none.

It was also evident that her 'death', the circumstances around it, had shaken asari politics deeply, seeing a marked shift in power away from her own faction. She would not be being immodest if she said that she was- _had been -_ one of Thessia's leading voices. She'd been able to sway important debates with her presence alone, set new policies at a galactic level and guide the direction of her people with little more than a quiet word in the right ear. For her, of all people, to fall from grace, in such as spectacular, public and, above all else, abrupt fashion...

She closed her eyes and tried to play it out in her head, forcing herself to think through the pain. Pain was good. Pain was her mind resisting the channels of thought that Saren had ingrained within her.

Her friends, of course, would have been horrified. Particularly affected would have been Effy, Gaiana and Rosi, who'd shared her concern at the possibility of a Spectre - of Saren - going rogue. The turian was powerful, wealthy, influential, and an extremely effective agent for the Council, but had begun to show signs of instability that his masters and, indeed, most of their own peers seemed wilfully blind to. When their careful investigation had hinted that there might be some truth to the rumours that Saren was looking for means to pursue his poorly-hidden vendetta against the humans, they'd been forced to act. A turian Spectre attacking humans and human colonies? With tensions between the two races already fraught, the actions of even a single rogue agent could spark a new war.

Of the four of them, Benezia had been best placed to act, already having ties to the turian through Binary Helix. They'd spent years carefully manoeuvring her into exactly the right position, helping her befriend him so that she might be drawn into his confidences enough to begin to sway him.

Her 'death' would have been a severe blow for her friends on both a personal and a political level. Privately, they would likely have felt responsible for the outcome of events, and she thought that they would have loved her well enough to grieve at her passing, whatever the exact circumstances. Publically, though, they would have lost standing, tainted by association even as they would have been forced to disavow her. Their proposals and reforms would likely have stalled, all of their decisions and ideas, past and present, subject to greater scrutiny from their peers and from the masses. Many ideas would have to be abandoned for several decades at least, if not entirely. After all, if they could misjudge one of their own intimates so badly, what else could they have been wrong about?

It would not stop there. The entire progressive faction would have been weakened, its four most powerful pillars knocked out from underneath it in one fell swoop. The dominant centrists would have been nudged a step or two towards the welcoming arms of the conservatives, undoing centuries of work weakening that faction. Both of those sides would have seen a surge in numbers too, as minor players and individuals with less ideological investment followed the prevailing wind. The overall result would have been a marked trend towards stasis and smug insularism, the very last thing her people, so slow to react at the best of times, needed.

And, ultimately, it would all be an enormous boon for those who actively disliked her, or hated all that she stood for. She was not so foolish as to think that she did not have enemies. It was very difficult to survive over eight hundred years of life without acquiring at least one or two. Her actions would have been treated by them as proof of some hidden and dangerous instability, something they'd suspected all along. They'd point to any even mildly questionable decision she had made over the years and use them to construct a pattern, likely starting with her decision to have a pureblooded daughter.

She sighed. As always, her thoughts came back to Liara.

She opened her eyes and refocused on the datapad, trying a variety of keyword searches related to her daughter against the data. There was remarkably little mention of Liara at all throughout the entire timeline, and even fewer pieces of photographic or vid evidence. Some news footage of Liara and a krogan being pulled out of a pile of rubble on the Citadel following Saren's defeat. A brief and uncomfortable interview, seemingly from not long after, at an awards ceremony. A few tangential mentions of her with regards to a ship called the Normandy and the human Spectre Shepard prior to that vessel's destruction and then... nothing.

It was puzzling, and more than a little bit worrying. Had Liara simply continued with her chosen career, there would have at least been a new article, or perhaps a paper or two over the past four years. The history of dead races might never have captured Benezia's imagination, but she had made a point of reading Liara's work, if only to gain some insight into how her estranged daughter thought and about what; she had some idea of the significance of the rediscovery if Ilos as a result. Certainly Liara, once freed from the Spectre's crew, would have gone straight back and lost herself amid the ruins? Well, perhaps that was it. Such an expedition would attract strict security measures, lest unscrupulous researchers determine the location of the planet and try to plunder its riches.

But... No, that couldn't explain it _all_ away.

Liara said the scars now adorning her body had come from Harbinger. Harbinger had a quite detailed entry to itself, a living ship akin to Sovereign but bigger and thought to be, in some way, the leader of the Reapers. For Liara to have faced the monstrous machine, she must have been part of the military action on and above Earth, for it had sat there since the start of the war. And, even if she overlooked that little detail, the fact remained that the datapad contained extensive biographies on a wide variety of seemingly insignificant people, most evidently written by Liara herself. What did she care of a human called Samantha Traynor, part of the Normandy crew or not? How many times did she need to read about how wonderful the damnable human Spectre was?

"You sleep alright?"

Her head jerked up in surprise to find Aethyta, sitting on the edge of the cot, watching her impassively. When had she woken up?

"Yes. I suppose."

"Nightmares?"

"No."

She had not dreamed at all, such as she could remember. For the first time since she'd boarded Saren's ship, her sleeping hours had contained... emptiness. It was welcome.

"How's your head?"

The ache was constant, but the throbbing had, at least, decreased in frequency. The room no longer swam when she moved. The pain that remained was welcome. A reminder.

"Improving. Thank you."

"Eh, I didn't have anything to do with it," Aethyta said dismissively, and then pointed towards the datapad with her chin. "I see the kid gave you some reading material."

"What? Oh, yes. A... history of the war, of sorts. But I believe it's incomplete."

"Yeah?"

"There's nothing about Liara in here. A few mentions just after I... 'died', and then nothing. It is clear that she put it together for me, but... She avoided my questions too, now that I think of it."

Aethtya sat still for a long moment, evidentially thinking. Then she shrugged in that way that meant she knew more than she was willing to say.

"She's probably working up to it. There's a lot to tell."

"You were involved?"

"For some of it. I... We... Well, it's... complicated."

The inflection to the final word immediately put Benezia on guard.

"How 'complicated'?"

Aethyta's internal debate was lengthier but rather more obvious this time.

"The truth of the matter?" Aethyta sighed eventually. "The kid went right off the deep end for about two years. Set up shop on Nos Astra as an intel broker, of all things. Fell in with some bad people. It was bad enough that the other matriarchs got worried that she was turning into another you. Well, you _after_ Saren. At the time I thought it was because you died and then the girlfriend got herself-"

"Girlfriend?"

The word burst from her mouth before she could quite stop it, and the look Aethyta gave her was almost amused. She supposed it would be funny, to an outsider's perspective: war, death and other horrors, her daughter 'going right off the deep end' and she was immediately side-tracked by the possibility that Liara had finally found someone to share her bed? But it was something clean and simple to focus upon, and Benezia always been one to look for good news within bad.

She'd despaired, over the years, of her daughter ever taking a lover. She'd even written to Aethyta about it on more than one occasion, seeking advice. Most maidens had taken at least three or four partners to bed by one hundred, either trying the other species out for fit or simply interested in the novelty of it. Benezia herself had done so in her youth and, while she had not taken a bondmate until Aethyta, she'd nonetheless had a welcome succession of bodies to warm her bed, her heart and her mind, even after her daughter's birth. But Liara had always seemed actively disinterested in pursuing such vital connections.

"Yeah. Your little girl's all grown up despite herself."

"I- Goddess!" She gave herself a moment for the news, and the relief, to sink in. "Did she survive the war? Are they still together? Is it anyone I know? What-"

"I don't think it's my place to spill the beans on that one. The kid can tell you what she wants to when she'd good and ready."

There was a twist to Aethyta's tone at the last that she recognised as bitter, and had a sudden, terrible feeling that they'd inadvertently strayed into territory that she'd desperately wanted to avoid. She had no strength for a confrontation now, whatever she deserved.

"Aethy-" she began.

"Don't you 'Aethy' me, Benezia T'Soni," Aethyta snapped, real fire in her eyes, sudden anger in every line of her body. "You've got no right."

It was a moment before Benezia could find her voice again.

"You're right. I'm sorry."

"You're sorry," Aethyta harrumphed, and glanced down, clearly deliberating. When she looked up again, the anger was still there, but contained, restrained, smouldering. "You should be sorry. You promised me that you'd tell her before she hit one hundred."

"I-"

"You. Promised," Aethyta reiterated in a tone that brooked no further interruptions. "Let her decide if she wanted to meet me or not. But then she turned up in my bar at one hundred and seven with no idea who the fuck I was, and by that stage it was too late for me to do a damned thing about it except pour her a drink and let her walk out the door."

"I left a letter," Benezia said quietly into the sudden, ringing silence. "In the event of my death."

"And a fat lot of good it did!" Aethtya all but spat. "They seized all of your assets and papers as part of the investigation. And since she knew you weren't _really_ dead, I'm guessing Liara didn't feel the need to push the issue for access."

"I couldn't have known that would happen!" she protested.

"That's not the point. Goddess! Was it really that hard to say: 'Hey, kid, your other parent's name is Aethyta Argyris and she'd like to meet you one day'?"

"Yes," she whispered, bowing her head. "It should not have been, but it was."

When Aethyta spoke next, her voice was quiet and level, which was somehow far, far worse than the open anger of just seconds before.

"Were you that ashamed of me?"

"What?" Her head jerked back up, eyes seeking out Aethyta's. "No! Never ashamed. Never of you."

Aethyta, though, clearly did not believe her.

"Then why?"

She'd been eight months pregnant when she'd left Aethyta, with another five to go. Pregnancies among matriarchs were not unheard of, especially among ones who'd made the change young like herself, but were certainly uncommon enough to be noteworthy. Some of the physiological changes accompanying the transition from matron made it more difficult, and certainly more uncomfortable, to bear young. She'd been sick almost daily, her days cut short by fatigue as her body struggled with two conflicting sets of hormones and other biological instructions. It had been worth it in the end, of course, but there had certainly been times when she'd wished she'd chosen otherwise.

Conceiving had not been a sensible decision. Aethyta had actually said as much, even if she'd ultimately swallowed her doubts and agreed to be the father. Between her own works and putting out the political fires that her bondmate invariably managed to raise, Benezia had simply had too much going on in her life to have and raise a child. And it had been a new and unneeded source of tension in their relationship, too. The strain had become particularly evident as Benezia's health and patience declined; the arguments and debates that had been the hallmark of their time together had begun, for the first time, to sometimes lose their playful edge.

But it wasn't until that one late night as she lay abed, exhausted but on edge in the wake of yet another argument with her bondmate, that she'd understood the full implications of her decision, and had a moment of stark, horrible clarity: the realisation that their daughter, made in love, would drive them apart. Asari, of all the known sentients, were the most demanding of offspring, slow to mature and dependent upon their mothers for decades. If Benezia was time-poor before the child was born, she would only grow more so deficient once she arrived. Something had to give, and since it could not be the child, it needs must have been either the asari that she loved, or the position amongst her people that she had already sacrificed _so much_ for. Her matron years. Her relationship with her sisters. Her faith.

She'd laid her hand upon her slowly swelling belly then, felt the sleepy stir of the unformed mind within her, and had wept as a secret, dark voice whispered that a young pureblood would have an easier time of it if the father was not there as a constant reminder of her parentage.

She'd never been ashamed of Aethyta. How could she be? Aethyta had passion, intelligence, a wicked sense of humour and a strength that had only made her hidden vulnerabilities all the more endearing. Benezia had been frustrated by her, certainly, annoyed, amused, surprised, charmed and more, but never ashamed. Ashamed of herself, however? Yes. Oh, yes. Especially when she knew all too well what one of her former bondmate's oldest, deepest vulnerabilities was.

She closed her eyes, feeling the tears threaten once more.

"Please," she whispered, "must we do this now?"

There was another long moment before Aethyta answered, her tone almost aggressively reasonable.

"No, I guess we don't. You're not really up to it. I know. But we have to, sooner or later."

"I know."

"Do you. Well, whoopdeedo." Aethyta rolled her eyes and settled back down onto the cot with a rustle of blankets. "You should get some more sleep. You're going to need your strength when we get back to Thessia."

"I know."

"Hmmph."

Benezia switched the datapad back off and lay back herself, trying to get comfortable in a bed designed for a human. And, later, when she dreamed, it was not Saren at her shoulder but Aethyta, whispering beautiful poison into her ear while her homeworld burned and her people screamed in darkness.


	6. Liara

Her mother gasped. Her father swore. And Liara sat and watched, impassively, as Thessia slowly grew before them until it filled the cockpit's windows. Inwardly, though, she cringed. Every column of smoke that discoloured the once-pristine atmosphere was a mark of her failure, every chunk of debris in orbit a testament to her deficiencies. She should have focused more of her attention on helping her people. Used the resources at her disposal to better browbeat the matriarchs into doing what had been necessary. She'd been stupid and naive to think that they would see reason of their own accord. Even if they were supposed to be wise and knowing and responsible, they were still only asari, and, in their fear and in their pride and in their complacency, they'd betrayed the people they were meant to serve. And she'd let them do it, because she, herself, had been too proud to see her people for what they really were: just people, like any others.

Failure and betrayal. Betrayal and failure. Those were her memories of Thessia now.

"I should have done more," someone said softly, and then she realised it was her.

"You did all you could," Aethyta told her from the co-pilot's chair.

"You don't know that," she replied shortly, feeling her mother's gaze, hot on the back of her neck.

She had told Benezia as little as she dared, evading her questions and outright lying, if largely by omission. It had felt _wrong_ \- Benezia had always been a sticker for the truth - and it would be harder now that the matriarch was up and about, but her mother seemed fragile. Disorientated enough that Liara didn't want to disturb her equilibrium even further by revealing just how much she'd changed since they had last seen each other. She'd been forced to become a different person, that day on Noveria, and again when Shepard died, and once more when the yahg lay dead at their feet. Four years it had been, since Shepard had rescued her, and she hardly recognised herself.

It would be harder to mask the changes once they had landed, she knew, and impossible once she started putting her plans into motion. She would not fail her people again by letting their leaders go unchallenged when they were clearly wrong. She no longer had the luxury of granting deference to age. But was she wrong for wanting Benezia to think of her as she had been? Even if, had things gone just a little differently, Benezia might well have been one of those same 'leaders' she now despised?

No. That wasn't right. Her mother believed in cooperation with the other species. She would have listened to reason. Liara would have been able to get her on their side. They would have worked together to stop the Reapers.

And yet...

And yet Benezia must have known about the Beacon. She was a matriarch, an important diplomat, an influential politician, a famous theologian and the closest thing Athame had left to a high priestess. There was no way she could _not_ have. Liara could only imagine what would have happened had _she_ known about the Beacon in time, all the lives that would have been saved. Benezia was just as complicit in their deaths as the rest of them. Would her mother have continued to conceal it from her, too? Until it was too late? She wished she could be certain that the answer was 'no'.

Another, darker realisation came along with the thought: the beloved stories of the Goddess from her childhood were nothing but lies built upon lies. Benezia had sat Liara in her lap, held her close to her heart and told her that the world was other than it was with the conviction of a true believer. And Liara had believed – not in the Goddess herself, but that _she_ believed.

"Even if you didn't - which I doubt-" Aethyta continued regardless, "I _know_ that you did a hell of a lot more than most."

"So did you," she countered, trying to steer the conversation towards safer waters. "I heard that there was talk of a statue after the Citadel."

"You heard wrong," Aethyta replied shortly, scowling. "And don't change the subject. From what _I_ heard, you pretty much single-handedly organised the evacuation here."

Edging well out into dangerous territory now, Liara opted to remain silent. But it was not to be.

"You were here, then? When Thessia fell?" Benezia asked.

She'd been _on_ Thessia, when the planet fell, had tasted the very moment when hope turned to ash. They'd won in the end, but how many lives would have been saved if they'd just been a bit better prepared? If her agents within Cerberus had managed to survive the purges, or avoid indoctrination? If her mind hadn't been reeling from the implications of the matriarch's deception? If she'd fought just a little bit harder? She heard the desperate pleas and the screams of the dying commandos every night in her nightmares. If only she had _known_.

"Yes. I was here. With the Normandy. It was... horrible," she said, shuddering at the memory. "You should strap yourself in now. The scanners are picking up a lot of debris in the upper atmosphere."

"We haven't been challenged yet," Aethtya noted, a hint of worry in her voice as Benezia settled into the jump seat without another word. The homeworld of their people was- _had_ -been one of the most heavily defended in the galaxy. Travel to and from Thessia was strictly controlled, traffic tightly regulated, and the Home Fleet had never had any compunction about using unexpected arrivals as target practice.

"No. From what I can tell, the Home Fleet was completely wiped out."

"But there should be _something_. Automated beacons. Fighters. The orbital platforms."

"Yes. There should."

But there wasn't, not even radio chatter from sector traffic control, and they descended without interference through turbulence of the upper atmosphere and down through the layers of smoke and ash until the great city-state spread out before them, a bleak, unforgiving vista stretching to the horizon. The comm unit crackled with static and silence.

She'd chosen Armali as the point of their return in large part because it was her home. She'd grown up there, played in its parks, run down its laneways, visited its temples, lost herself in its museums. But Armali was also, in many respects, the closest thing Thessia had to a capital, containing within its soaring heights and sprawling confines its largest debating Forum, its greatest legal library, the embassies of the other races and the greatest number of matriarchs per capita of any city within the Republics. Unsurprisingly, given the way the Reapers operated, it had been one of the first places on the planet targeted.

There had been five and a half billion people on Thessia before the war began, and some sixty million of them lived within its greatest city-state. Surveying the devastation now, from the air, Liara would be surprised if a tenth of that number had survived. There wasn't a single building left standing within the city's confines, the bridges collapsed and roadways torn. The once pristine waterways were black with ash and choked with debris; the parks, great and small, little more than glassy craters no longer capable of sustaining life. They flew over impact craters the size of skyball fields and the body of a Reaper destroyer, fallen on its side to crush Ar'Shian Square, where the great statue of Istha T'Rolin had stood.

Of all the monuments in her city, Liara had always loved that statue best. The matron in her flight suit, head tilted towards the sky in wonder, the Parnitha system modelled in her outstretched hand... She had always seemed to embody all that was great about their people: curiosity, serenity, determination and drive. Now that she knew that the plans for the first eezo drive core had likely come, not from Istha's own imagination and skill, but through the Beacon, Liara was glad to see it crushed. Another lie to be absolved.

"I'm getting a nav beacon," Aethyta said abruptly, bringing it up on the screen. "Downtown Nanthris."

The markets. Well, she supposed that made sense. Down by the river for water, open and flat enough to host a large crowd and near several major food distribution warehouses.

"Probably a refugee camp," she acknowledged, bringing the freighter around.

It _was_ a refugee camp, smaller than she would have liked and, when viewed from above, little more than a disorganised huddle of tents and emergency shelters crouched against the banks of the sadly polluted river. Some work had been done towards building defensive walls; to Liara's now practiced eye, it was a mediocre job at best, cobbled together from rubble, storage containers and a few pieces of portable wall likely liberated from fortifications elsewhere. She couldn't spot anyone manning the battlements as they came in, low, but a gaggle of young children ran out from one of the studier shelters, pointing excitedly up towards them. The group was quickly shepherded back to relative safety by a couple of older girls, and moments later a pair of asari in commando leathers appeared, moving purposefully.

The camp wasn't much to look at, certainly, but it would be a place to start. She had to start _somewhere_. And, if not here, there would certainly be other places that needed help.

Liara picked out an open spot on the downstream end of the camp, behind what little protection the walls offered, and carefully brought the freighter down, killing the engines once settled. She undid her point harness and made her way out of the cabin and to her locker in the cargo bay, leaving her parents to follow after. She retrieved her gauntlets there, and drew and clipped them on, wincing as the right rubbed against the still-tender skin of that hand. The fit was imperfect now, tight in places and loose - or empty - in others, and the gauntlet itself stiffly new.

She tried not to think about it, and avoided her gaze in the locker's mirror.

Her weapons came out next, to be drawn, checked and holstered. First, from the rack, came the Tempest that had been the first gun she'd ever bought for herself, back on Nos Astra; it was an old, reliable friend, modded to increase accuracy and clip size. Next, from its case, she drew the Paladin Shepard had 'borrowed' for her from Spectre supplies.

She stared down at the pistol in silence. Goddess, Shepard was never very far from her thoughts. If she closed her eye she could see the human standing before her, the gun and its case in her hands, that silly, lopsided, perfect smile on her face. Liara had laughed even as she accepted it, because she knew that this was her lover's idea of a romantic gift (where other beings gave sweet treats or pretty flora, Shepard gave _ammunition mods_ ), and then the two of them had gone down to the cargo bay to test it out. Testing had led to competing, and Liara had quickly achieved a lead that seemed comfortable until she realised that Shepard had been deliberately throwing the match. Liara had told her, all mock indignation, that such tactics might well work on a certain turian of their acquaintance but wouldn't on her, and Shepard had asked her then, in that low, sultry voice, her eyes dark and alive in a way that made Liara's breath catch, what _would_ work and then-

"Overkill much?"

Liara shrugged and closed the locker, clipping the gun into its holster at her waist beside her grenades, along with the spare clips and medigel pouch.

"I doubt that we will encounter trouble, but the humans have a saying: it's better to be safe than sorry." She looked past Aethyta in her own light armour to Benezia, not quite able to stop a frown of concern when she noted that her mother was almost hugging herself, expression uncertain as she eyed her daughter's armaments. "Are you ready?"

"No," Benezia admitted with a tight smile that was painful to see. "But I believe there is little choice in the matter."

They'd discussed it at length, the three of them. Or, rather, Liara had explained her reasoning until the other two had been forced to agree that there was no point in hiding Benezia's return.

Oh, Liara had _considered_ it. Benezia looked a pale shadow of herself, and they could alter her markings and do one or two other little tricks that would draw out those differences enough to let her hide in plain sight. But, if information brokering had taught Liara one thing, it was what secrets never stayed secret for long. If they tried to conceal Benezia any longer than absolutely necessary, the implication, when the truth was inevitably revealed, would be that they thought they'd done something wrong.

"I'm sorry it has to be so soon," she said, honestly. "I would have waited until you were feeling better of I could have, but..."

"As you say," Benezia said, and turned away.

Liara caught Aethyta's eye then; the matriarch's shoulders lifted in the slightest of shrugs as she prepped and holstered her own shotgun. There was real tension between the older two asari now, and Liara wondered, not for the first time, if involving Aethyta in this was a good idea. But who else could she turn to? It would have been unfair to expect anyone aboard the Normandy to come with her to Thessia when their own homes were in ruins, and she'd not heard from Shiala since Rannoch.

Liara suppressed a sigh, straightened up, and led the way through to the airlock, hesitating only a moment before keying in the sequence to open it.

The smell hit her first as the outer door hissed open, a scent of mingled ash, death and decay that was all-too familiar from Earth. Cool damp air was next, cold enough across her face and neck that she almost shivered. Far too cold for an Armali summer, she knew. And it was strangely, unnaturally quiet, the aural landscape devoid of even birdsong or insect noise. The only sounds she could hear were the wind, a distant clatter of falling stone and the sluggish churn of the river.

One of the commandos she had spotted during their descent was waiting for them outside the hatch, rifle at the ready. Elsewise, the camp appeared all but deserted. Over the other asari's shoulder, though, Liara spotted the other huntress, having taken up position atop an emergency shelter with her sniper rifle.

She found herself surprised by the lack of a welcoming party. There was almost no relief effort on Thessia; where the other species had hierarchical systems of governance to direct the flow of aid, the Republics, with their sprawling, technology-dependant democracy, were floundering, the various colonies and outposts too shocked and too busy trying to tend to their own populaces to worry about faceless figures on the homeworld. Surely those here would welcome anyone who might be bringing supplies? Or had they faced raiders or pirates, or others of that ilk to make them wary of newcomers?

The thought of such filth setting foot, unchallenged, in the city of her childhood made her blood run hot. But there was no denying that it was a possibility, now. With the Home Fleet gone, and the others scattered, Thessia was all but undefended. The major merc companies might be under Aria T'Loak's thumb, but there were always a hundred other bands, many of them opportunistic cowards who'd sat out the war, and Thessia, even devastated, was a rich planet.

The commando before Liara was shockingly young, barely old enough to don the leathers if she was any judge, filthy and clearly on the verge of exhaustion. Her eyes, though, were hard, her face wary, and she carried herself like the gun was an extension of her body. She opened her mouth, in challenge or in greeting Liara couldn't say, but froze, the words dying upon her lips and her gun falling to her side when Liara stepped out fully, into the wan sun of her homeworld. The wariness melted into a look Liara had seen before, if usually directed Shepard:

Awe.


	7. Liara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, I may have forgotten to update this until recently reminded... Many apologies.

"Wait, you're-" the girl began.

"Yes?"

"You're Liara T'Soni, aren't you? You were with Commander Shepard on the Normandy and-"

"Yes," Liara said smoothly, torn between relief and disappointment but masking it with a smile.

On one hand, her newfound fame would certainly make the task ahead of her easier. If people thought her a hero, experience suggested that they would be more inclined to listen to what she had to say. On the other, part of her had rather hoped that her supposed celebrity was not so well entrenched amongst her people. Her time as the Broker had only served to reinforce her natural disposition towards the limelight and shunning thereof; being known, a face recognisable galaxy-wide, was dangerous and deeply uncomfortable besides. The attention had been bad enough on Earth, those few days.

"I am. And you are..?"

"Aurelia Vamos," the youth said, drawing herself up and saluting in the southern style, her open hand flat over her heart. "I was part of Matriarch Eachannythis' retinue. I - Goddess! It's an honour, Lady T'Soni."

It took a moment for Liara to realise that the compliment and honorific was directed towards her. She had to force herself not to turn around. There had only ever been one Lady T'Soni while Liara had been alive.

"'Lady T'Soni' is my mother," she corrected gently but firmly. "'Doctor' will suffice for me."

She saw the flicker of a question pass across the commando's face, and then her gaze fell over Liara's shoulder. The rifle snapped back up, the young asari falling back into a defensive stance.

"Wait, that's-"

"My mother," Liara said, quickly moving to position herself between the two, turning her head slightly so she could keep the sniper's nest in view. She was still trying to get used to having half of her normal field of vision. She heard movement behind her, and knew that Aethyta was bringing her own gun up, making the suddenly tense scene worse.

"But she-"

"She was in stasis, during the war," she said quickly. "She was indoctrinated. Do you know what that is?"

"I've heard rumours," Aurelia said, glancing between mother and daughter uncertainly. "Some kind of mind-control..?"

"Yes. Exactly. The Reapers targeted the leaders of the major races and tried to brainwash them into betraying their own people. That's why the Batarian Hegemony fell so quickly. My mother's crimes were not her own, and we have nothing to fear from her now." Or so Liara devoutly hoped. She reached out, then, and laid her hand atop the rifle's muzzle, exerting a gentle downwards pressure. "Please. If you cannot trust her, trust me."

After a long moment, Aurelia let the gun drop, then abruptly holstered it behind her back. Liara felt a surge of relief wash through her: the first hurdle cleared.

"Sorry, my La- I mean, Doctor. It's just-"

"It is quite understandable."

She favoured the commando with another smile, and only then did she dare a glance over her own shoulder at her parents. Aethyta was watching her with a hint of approval but Benezia...

Liara looked away quickly, not quite ready to face what she saw there.

Aurelia led them through the camp, quickly joined by her slightly older partner Griete, explaining the situation as they went. Liara interrupted periodically to ask questions or clarify matters, as did her father; Benezia, though, remained uncharacteristically silent, head bowed whenever the commandos snuck suspicious glances back at her.

Aurelia and Griete were all that remained of the household guards of two different matriarchs. The pair had met in the ancient, disused sewers below Armali's winding, paved streets, each directed by their Lady to get their household's children to safety. The bombardment and invasion of Thessia, for them, had passed mostly in darkness, the children barricaded in some forgotten cellar while they took turns to raid and scavenge above ground for supplies. Sometimes they encountered other survivors and were able to lead them to safety. At others, they were not.

By the time Reapers had finally fallen, their bedraggled group had numbered almost fifty. The two commandos had been joined by a third, and a matron who'd run with a merc company in her maiden days. Twenty-three children under thirty, including toddlers and an infant still at her terrified mother's breast, a dozen more girls progressing towards maturity and a handful of civilian adults, mainly matrons. When they'd emerged from the safety of their hiding place, they'd joined other shocked survivors in making their way towards the markets, where Matriarch Efrosyni and her half-dozen surviving followers had begun to organise a camp.

Liara recognised the name as a figure from her childhood, one of a group of politically powerful asari her mother had always seemed to find time for, sometimes at Liara's expense. Benezia recognised it too; Liara heard her sharp inhalation of breath.

But Efrosyni had been wounded at some point during the final days of the defence, and, sickened from the subsequent infection, now lay on her deathbed. Without her wisdom to guide them into decisive action, the adults of the camp, skewed wildly young in any event, were locked in debate, trying and failing to build a consensus on how best to proceed without her. The division of opinion was threatening to splinter the camp and Liara reflected, not for the first time, that the perpetual plebiscite that was the asari political process was as terrible at responding quickly and rationally to crises.

This flaw in their governance had been recognised, long ago and by wiser heads than Liara's, and systems put into place to account for it, but never had a disaster of this magnitude even been contemplated. The police and other emergency responders had been all but wiped out in the initial bombardments and invasion waves, the High Command that oversaw their shattered military decimated, scattered around the surviving colonies, and the matriarchs that kept their people's wisdom and the knowledge of their laws alive were all missing or dead- or worse.

The Reapers were efficient killers. Liara would give them that. And they'd seemed more interested in killing her people outright than gathering them up for processing, like they did to the other races. One day, perhaps, she'd have time to investigate the discrepancy.

When they reached the largest of the emergency shelters, pulling double-duty as a dining hall and debating forum, she was stopped from entering by a hand on her arm.

"I would speak with Efrosyni," Benezia said as she turned back. "She is my friend of old. Please."

There was concern, in her mother's eyes, for her friend, but there, too, behind it, something dark and fearful as they flicked towards the shelter and its audible hubbub. Liara found herself suddenly reminded of all of the engagements and parties and functions she'd been dragged along to in her youth. Hundreds of mornings, afternoons and evenings spent in misery, wishing she were somewhere, _anywhere_ else, hiding in corners and out-of-the-way places, alone but for the nervous flutter of her heart in her chest, the wretched stammering of her own voice and the certain knowledge that she would never be as beautiful or as elegant or as intelligent as the asari who moved gracefully through the throng, laughing with melodic voices and flirting with light hands and swaying hips.

Liara let her own gaze flick over to Aethyta, who saw the question in her eye and shrugged.

"Eh, I probably wouldn't be able to resist kicking their heads in anyway." She nodded to Griete. "Alright babe, lead the way."

When her parents were gone, Liara sighed. It would be easier, without them watching, to be the person she'd become, but the irony of the situation was not lost on her. She, who had shunned the political sphere, seeking it out. Her mother, who'd lived for it, fleeing in apparent fear.

"Lady?" Aurelia prompted when she didn't move.

"Doctor," she corrected absently, still frowning at the door. She had always promised herself that she would never be like her mother. And yet, here she was, about to do an incredibly Benezia-like thing, albeit in a Liara-like way. Or so she hoped.

She opened the door, stepped through it to stand at parade-ground rest at the back of the crowd, and waited until silence, in dribs and spurts, fell, heads turning. Only when she had the full, undivided attention of every person in the room did she speak, her voice cool and calm and deadly quiet:

"What is going on here?"


	8. Benezia

It was past dark when Benezia emerged from the two conjoined shelters serving as a home to the wounded and ill of the camp.

She hugged herself tightly, eyes closed, breath fogging in the cold night air as she tilted her head up towards the cloudy, smoke-laden sky. It had rained earlier; the droplets were acid. She felt drained and hollow, as though a black well had swallowed up everything she had once been, leaving only shame and anguish and a terrible, leaden feeling of fatigue deep within her bones. An ache in her heart to match the pain in her head.

Rosi would die tonight. Benezia had seen enough of sickness and death in her lifetime, even within the bounds of the Republics, to know this to be true. Her friend of some four hundred years, killed by the monsters she herself had worked so hard to bring back into the galaxy. The universe would be a lesser place without her quick, dry wit and sometimes wild fancies. If Benezia could have gone in her stead, she would have.

In her fever and through her pain, Rosi had thought her a ghost. Benezia had felt it best not to correct her, even when her friend had raged at her for betraying them, or begged absolution for sending her to her death. Instead, she'd held her hand and sponged her forehead and offered what little comfort she could while Rosi's surviving students watched with barely concealed contempt and loathing. Aethyta's scowling presence had kept them at bay, though, until she could bear to sit no longer.

_Saren's talons grasped her shoulders and he shook her viciously, opening old wounds and causing new._

_"You fool! You idiot! I thought you understood how important this is!" he roared. She tried to twist away; this only served to anger him further. The backhanded blow caught her across the side of her face, drawing no blood but leaving her slightly staggered._

_"I'm sorry!" she stammered, mind reeling from his anger and the blow. "I thought-"_

_"You thought? You THOUGHT!?"_

_Another blow, and then his hand was around her throat, crushingly tight, the tips of his talons digging into the sensitive folds at the back of her neck, lifting her clean off her feet. She froze, breath caught in her chest, not daring to move lest he do more damage there. Her wide eyes locked onto his wild ones._

_He dropped her then, staggering backwards and turning away, his hand across his eyes, strangely hunched in on himself._

_"Get out of my sight," he growled, not looking at her._

_Part of her wanted no more than to flee entirely, to take her retinue and return to her home and do what she could to further their cause from there. Another part of her wanted to go to him, to soothe away the angry tremors that wracked his frame. But the rest of her counselled patience. To stay. To keep working. To regain his trust._

_He was right, after all. She'd overstepped her bounds by interpreting his orders for herself rather than following them to the letter, and so she had failed him. She did not deserve to be in his presence. She would find a way rectify her mistake, pacify his anger, and then she could return to him. She must. She would be obedient. She would-_

"Hey-"

She jerked away so violently from the touch that she stumbled and fell, hard, to her hands and knees. The shock of the impact rippled up through her body, jolting her back to some semblance of sense. She was on Thessia. Saren was dead. His ship destroyed. The hand upon her shoulder, the voice at her ear, Aethyta's.

Her head began to pound again. She gritted her teeth against it.

"Whoa whoa whoa - what just happened there?

When she opened her eyes again, Aethyta was kneeling before her, all concern.

"You alright?"Aethtya prompted when she didn't respond.

"Goddess, Aethtya, what do you think?" she snapped, finding her voice. She pushed herself up to her knees, one, damp, muddy hand covering her face, and breathed deeply, trying to calm her racing heart. Aethyta did not deserve such anger, she knew, but part of her, coming from the black pit, wanted to lash out and cause more pain. "I- I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I-"

"It's ok."

Benezia's hand fell to her neck. Goddess, she could still feel Saren's hands around her throat, his talons pricking her skin. But it was a memory. Just a memory.

She didn't realise that she'd said the words aloud until she heard Aethyta's 'ah' of understanding.

"Wanna tell me about it?"

"Not particularly."

"Benezia-"Aethyta's tone was gentle, but there was a note of warning in it all the same, and Benezia remembered Liara's words on the night she had been awakened. They did not trust her. They were right not to.

"Saren struck me," she said hearing the shudder in her own voice. "I had displeased him. He was… I… All I wanted was to return to his good graces."

She took another deep breath, closed her eyes again and tried to force the memory and the way it made her skin crawl from her mind. She needed to focus on the here and the now. The earth under her. The sky above. The smell of rain and ash. The breath in her lungs, the energy of her body, the beating of her heart. Slow. Still. Calm.

Aethyta's 'hmm' as she stood back up was considered, but she said nothing other than: "Need a hand?"

She was trembling again, she realised.

"Please."

Aethyta helped her gently to her feet and stepped back, watching her, still concerned. Benezia shivered, not just from the wind as it picked up, and hugged herself again.

"'should probably get some warmer clothes. Shouldn't be this cold, this time of year."

"No. It should not."

Aethyta wet her lips, and glanced back at the medical block.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry about Rosi."

"You never liked her," she remembered. She and Aethyta had always had wildly different social circles with little overlap.

"I never liked most of your friends," Aethyta shrugged. "And the feeling was mutual from what I could tell. But she deserves another couple hundred years of being a sardonic pain in the ass."

"She does," Benezia agreed. "More so than I."

"Hey, none of that," her former bondmate began, only to stop abruptly as an inasari scream echoed across the compound. "Aw, shit."

"What was that?"

"Banshee," Aethyta supplied the unfamiliar word, unlimbering her shotgun as the scream rose again, joined by a second. "Tacka-Yakshi. What happens when the Reapers process an asari."

It took a moment for Benezia to work out the translation and remember the associated myth. When she did, she shuddered anew. The ancient tribes of the Iaonna Plains had believed that the unmourned dead came back to life as a curse upon the living, a vengeful demon who stole, not life itself, but the things _of_ life. It was the soul-taker. The mind-stealer. The thief of dreams.

"Goddess protect us."

By then Aethyta was running in the direction of the noise; she trailed after on unsteady feet, buffeted occasionally by people fleeing in the opposite direction. There was shouting ahead and more of those horrible screams, answered by the measured _crack_ of sniper fire. She forced herself to pick up the pace, and reached the wall just as Aethyta finished scrambling up the ladder to the battlement. Benezia hesitated for a moment, then followed. Weak as she was and with such difficulty concentrating as she had, she would have little to offer in any battle, but she felt, at least, that she should _see_ what the monsters had turned her people into.

There were six asari atop the crude battlement when she reached it, including Aethyta and Liara. She recognised two of the commandos as Aurelia and Griete, their escort of earlier; the other two, also in the leathers, were strangers to her. None of them paid her any mind beyond an initial glance. It was at once a relief and a new source of discomfort that there seemed to be no expectation that she contribute to the discussion.

"This happens every night?" Liara was saying as she stared down a spotter's scope. Benezia followed her gaze out into the darkness. There were half a dozen glowing blue shapes moving out there among the ruined buildings beyond the killing zone, and another five upon it. Periodically, one of them would vanish behind some unseen obstacle, or surge forward in a series of blindly-fast hops that she eventually recognised as biotic charges. Less frequently, one of them would wink out entirely, evidently felled.

"Yes, Lady. Doctor. Sometimes it's more," Aurelia said, lining up and taking another shot. "Sometimes it's less."

"Had one of them get into the compound three nights ago," one of the unknown commandos, a matron with turquoise crest banding, added in a matter-of-fact tone. "Killed five people before we could put it down. Nasty business."

"We won't let that happen again," Liara said firmly, passing the scope to Aethyta without taking her eye from the scene before her. Her hand came down to rest upon the pistol at her hip. "Do they come during the day?"

"Not in such numbers. Lone wanders, mainly. Sometimes we run into them while scouting and try to lead them away. They're hard to shake. Harder to kill."

"I wonder what's drawing 'em here now then?" Aethyta mused. Out in the darkness, another glowing shape fell with a scream of rage. "The light? The noise?"

"We wondered about that. Dora wanted to set up an outpost up river with some floodlights and sound system to see if it'd draw them off, but we don't have the resources."

"We do now, and it's certainly worth a try," Liara agreed absently. "Also, there are some sentry turrets in the freighter we can set up around the perimeter. But, in truth, I am more interested in why they're not attacking each other. The ones on Earth went mad when the Reapers fell and started attacking everything in sight, without discrimination. I was told the same was true on Palaven."

"Troop composition, maybe?" Aethtya suggested. "I'm not seeing any husks or marauders, and that's mainly what you got on Earth. Palaven too."

"Perhaps."

"Anyway, save the speculation for tomorrow," Aethyta said, lowering the scope finally and turning back to the commandos, none of whom looked up from their work. "Unless you've got another couple of sniper rifles hidden in that armour of yours, we're not going to be able to stop them all before they reach the wall."

"We set up some deadfalls and other traps they've still got to get through, but we ran out of proximity mines four days ago, so you might be right," Griete said, popping her red-hot thermal clip and slamming in a new one in a single, smooth motion. As she did so, another series of bone-chilling screams rose from the glowing creatures, and the commando shuddered. "Goddess, I _hate_ those things."

"Don't hate them," Liara said evenly. "They didn't have any say in what they became. Pity them, and grant them the mercy of a swift end."

Liara had not looked at her once throughout the entire conversation, and now ducked her head to confer further with one of the unnamed commandos. Aethyta, though, did.

"You shouldn't be up here," Aethyta said, almost gently. Benezia could not say how she appeared to her former bondmate, tired and muddied and heartsick as she was. "Go back to the freighter. Get your head down. The kid and I will handle this."

She shook her head, trying not to wince at the renewed throbbing in her temples the motion generated.

"No. I would see what I have wrought."

"Benezia-"

"Aethyta, let me see. Please"

"It ain't pretty," Aethyta warned her with a frown, but handed over the scope anyway.

"I was not expecting it to be," she replied.

It wasn't, but she forced herself to not look away. This was the end she had worked towards, given flesh and form. If she and Saren had been certain that the price of pride in the face of Sovereign's kind was death, then they had ignored the cost of surrender: ruin.

The creatures had been asari, once, in the same way that the things on New Eden had been human before Saren's arrival. That much was evident. But, like those humans, these had become twisted, diseased caricatures of asari. Heavy-breasted, swollen-bellied and dead-eyed, their grey, cracking skin was drawn tight over distorted bone and cartilage and corded muscle, studded with tubes and lights, wounds from around which black ichor oozed and crusted.

And yet...

And yet there was a strange kind of beauty to them. She could see more and more of it, the longer she looked. They _crackled_ with power, even at this distance, biotic barriers shrugging off volley after volley of fire. The underlying structures of the asari body were laid bare for all to see, delicate and deceptively strong. And there was life, there, in those bodies, where there otherwise might have been only death. Surely continued existence was preferable to utter oblivion?

The creature she watched threw back its head and screamed, a wordless cry of unimaginable torment that the others quickly took up. Her head resonated with the noise of it, her vision starting to swim.

_These were not her thoughts_. Goddess! This was not her voice. Death would be preferable to the twilight existence of such things, neither dead nor alive, and she suddenly knew why they were drawn to the camp: it _was_ the light. They sought release, relief in the arms of the Goddess. Athame taught that they would all go peacefully into the light, peacefully, when the time came.

The scope clattered away as she pressed both hands to her temples, her legs buckling beneath her as she fell to her knees for the second time in that evening. For the second time that evening, too, Aethyta was suddenly kneeling before her.

"Shit, Nezzie, this is not the time," Aethyta said. She started to reach out to touch her, then stopped, drawing her hands carefully back, palms up. "I told you to go back. You're not ready for this."

The pressure inside Benezia's head was building again, sharply, inexorably, until she thought she might explode from it. Stars danced before her eyes, her teeth ground together, jaw clenched. Through it, though, she managed to reach out, grabbing a fistful of Aethyta's jacket with one hand.

"Kill them," she managed to whisper as their eyes met. "Quickly. Give them peace."

And then, to her relief, the small mercy and blackness of sleep reached out and claimed her once again.


	9. Liara

Liara turned at the sound of Aethyta's cursing just in time to see her catch Benezia as she went down, momentarily distracted from the ranged battle that was rapidly threatening to become a close-quarters one.

"-goddess-damned stubborn fucking-"

"What happened?" she asked, stepping smartly over and bending to assist. Her mother was out cold, a smear of dirt across her brow and a trickle of blood running from her nose. Her breathing was shallow and her pulse, when Liara took it, fast.

"How the hell would I know? One minute she's fine, the next she's spouting gibberish and then this. Had some sort of a flashback thing not five minutes ago. I told her to go back to the freighter and lie down, but _no_ , she just _had_ to see. Stubborn bitch. I swear, she's worse than you are!"

Liara was fairly certain that her father could out-stubborn both herself and her mother if she put her mind do it, and elected to remain silent on that one. Instead, she helped manoeuvre her mother into a recovery position and then glanced back over the makeshift parapet. Another banshee had been felled in the interim, but the remaining six would be upon them soon, and only one had taken substantial damage. She cursed inwardly.

"I knew this was a bad idea," Aethyta continued to grouse, glancing back over the wall herself. "Thawing her out. Bringing her here. You could have waited another year or more, until things were better. We're not going to have the time to constantly babysit, and I don't think that all of this," she gestured beyond the wall, "is going to do any wonders for her mental state."

Liara's blood ran cold as the words registered, accompanied by a pang of sudden guilt. She'd always told herself that she'd awaken her mother once the war was over, in much the same way she'd once promised that she'd recover Shepard's body, bring down the Shadow Broker. But she'd never thought to question the wisdom of the exact _timing_ of bringing Benezia out of stasis. The war was over. The Reapers were dead. That meant she could finally have her mother back. But, for Benezia, seeing all of this - goddess, it'd almost be like forcing Shepard to relive the Blitz.

Stupid, stupid, selfish, short-sighted - all the things Liara could not afford to be. And, worse, it was too late, now, to put her mother back.

"Well, I wish you'd said so at the time," she said shortly, drawing her pistol and moving into position along the parapet.

"I did, remember?"

"No, you _wondered_ if it was." Two of the banshees were within range now; she checked which of the pair the commandos had flagged and opened fire upon it. "And then not for those reasons."

Aethyta rolled her eyes and cracked her knuckles.

"Well, excuse me if I was still trying to get over the fact that, you know, she _wasn't actually dead_ and didn't have time to consider the full implications of the situation."

"Can we please argue about this later? I cannot help but feel that a battlefield is not the place for a family dispute."

On a battlefield with an _audience_ , no less, she added within the privacy of her own head. Hopefully Aurelia and the rest would be too fixated on the battle to pay them any mind, but she doubted it. Commandos, as a general rule, were possessed of very high levels of situational awareness.

"Shows what you know," Aethyta snorted, and then she was gone, jumping lightly over the wall with a flash of biotic energy.

Liara had never seen an asari fight like Aethyta did. Asari combat doctrine almost universally called for classic hit and run tactics, combatants relying on speed, mobility and keeping a very respectful distance between themselves and any enemy. It was a doctrine Liara herself subscribed to when she couldn't rely on the superior doctrine of overwhelming force.

Aethyta, though, was a brawler, like Vega, or Shepard on a bad day or, yes, Urdnot Wrex. The matriarch threw a powerful warp at her target with a lazy backhand, charged into it with an explosion of biotic force that lit up the killing ground like a lighting strike, ducked a wild swipe from its taloned hands, followed _that_ up with a series of shotgun blasts to its face at point-blank range, and, while it struggled to recover from the assault, barriers down, stove in what remained of its head with the butt of her shotgun in a brutal, two-handed swing.

It was a picture of pure, savage efficiency, not a single, wasted movement in the entire sequence. At the end of it, Aethyta stood above the dead banshee's body, panting slightly as she waited for her gun to cool enough to be fired again. Then she picked out her next target and started to repeat the sequence.

Liara stared at the spectacle, open-mouthed and a little bit awestruck, before remembering where she was and realising that Aethyta was now out in the middle of the killing zone, alone, with the four remaining banshees bearing down on her, charging forward in fits and spurts. The sound of their screams filled the night air once more.

She cursed and vaulted the parapet herself, using her biotics to slow her fall, and hit the ground running. While Aethyta looked to be able to handle the creatures on a one-to-one basis, two at once gave even Shepard trouble and three or four to one would certainly be lethal. She needed someone to draw the extras off, so they could be dealt with, one at a time.

Divide and conquer. Another classic asari strategy.

It was only when Liara had managed, via means of a clumsily-thrown grenade, to attract the attention of the unengaged banshee nearest to her father that it dawned on her that this, too, was an incredibly stupid thing to have done. The blasted creatures had always seemed to be immune to her singularities and stasis fields, meaning that two of her three most powerful biotic attacks were all but useless. More than that, she was tired, out of shape following her two weeks of recovery and inactivity, couldn't hold a gun properly in her right hand and, yes, was missing half her field of vision and part of her depth perception.

Stupid stupid _stupid_. She'd have to get back into her fitness and training regime starting tomorrow - she could probably attach herself to the commandos' own sessions, if they had them - and work at doing everything left-handed. For now, though, she had little option but to see this course of action through. One thing that she'd learned from Shepard was that people wanted confidence and decisiveness in their leaders. You listened to any advice offered or requested, made your decisions and then made them work. She couldn't back down here, not with an audience. She had a reputation, now, and respect, once earned, had to be maintained. It wouldn't do for a 'hero' from the Normandy to retreat without properly engaging the foe.

She swapped out for her Tempest and opened fire as the banshee tried to close on her, catching it in her a warp field of her own, which she detonated with a clumsy throw. She dropped a grenade at her feet as it recovered and charged at her, covering the distance between them with unsettling speed. Liara dove away at the last instant, behind the ruined remains of a wall, felt the explosion and heard the scream, and knew that she'd timed it right. Rising, dodging, she emptied two clips into the thing before it fell, aided by a barrage from the compound's walls.

Two down...

Liara looked around wildly until she spotted the remaining two monsters. Aethyta was tangling with one - its barriers were down, but it seemed to be happy to take altogether too much punishment, and the matriarch, staying just out of reach of those dangerous arms, was visibly starting to tire. The other creature, despite being continually peppered with sniper fire, was making its way inexorably towards her, coming in from behind.

"Aeythta!" she shouted out in warning.

The matriarch glanced back over her shoulder, spotted the flanker and swore loudly enough to be heard clear across the battlefield. She dodged away from the first banshee, angling back towards the camp, but tripped, stumbled, went down, the gun flying out of her hand. The monster she'd been battling, thankfully, fell seconds after, taken through the skull and throat by snipers' rounds, but the second banshee, leaving bright blue after-images as it charged, would be upon her in seconds. Aethyta seemed to realise this too, fumbling at her side for her shotgun, backing away on her elbows, even as Liara started to run towards them, quickly picking up pace despite the uneven ground.

Liara was not quite sure where the idea came from – certainly not the rational part of her mind - but it went straight from her brain to her body in an instant. She ducked her head, set her shoulder and ran in towards it, quick as she could, like a farliner dashing for the scoring platform in skyball. Her charge took it in the side just as it reached her father.

It was altogether too much like running into an electrified wall, and she rebounded off of it, hard, tumbling to one side, her arm numb from the shoulder down. But the banshee was knocked off balance too, enough for Aethyta to regain her feet and dance away, gun in hand. Between the two of them circling it and the snipers on the walls, it was finally felled moments later.

"I swear, this is fucking harder work than it used to be," Aethyta puffed when it was over, wiping blood from her cheek. She caught Liara's eye and nodded with apparent approval. "Nice job, kid. We'll make a krogan of you yet! Still, remind me to show you how to do the charge thing properly. Keep doing it that way and all you'll do is break your damn fool neck. You've got to use your biotics-"

Later – and it was much later - after they'd conferred and celebrated with the commandos, after they'd put Benezia safely to bed, after they'd found and deployed the auto turrets, after she'd wiped herself clean of some of the filth of the battle and stripped herself of her armour, after she'd treated the burns and changed dressings as Karin had directed… After all that, she'd all but fallen flat into her cot, wedged between two stacks of cargo containers. Sleep though, would not come. Her body might have been exhausted, but her head was full of the things she had to do in the morning.

She had to reorganise the camp, for one, to make it more manageable. She had some ideas in that respect, at least, modified versions the ancient tribal villages she'd studied in the third year of her undergraduate. She needed to see about bulking up the camp's defences, too. The layout changes and turrets would help. And, while almost all of the camp's occupants appeared to be civilians, she could probably find the bodies necessary – with some browbeating and a bit of training - to give the commandos a break from watch.

But for proper security, to do the cleanout work required to clear this patch of Thessia and beyond, she needed more able-bodied fighters. They were in desperately short supply. Perhaps she could ask Wrex for a favour..? Surely there were still krogan out there whose lust for battle hadn't been entirely sated by the war. But she'd need to get the comm buoys modified and deployed and tied into the mass relay before she could call out of the system. Could that be done tomorrow? Possibly. Damn the Reapers. They'd even managed to take out all of the _redundant_ communications infrastructure. And then, behind all of that, there was the issue of food. The camp's population, with proper rationing, could probably last a month or two just off of the supplies she'd brought, but they'd need to find a long-term source of sustenance. Perhaps-

When she finally drifted off into an exhausted sleep, Shepard was there, waiting for her, gloriously naked, bathed in the soft blue light of her quarters on the Normandy. She sat on the bed beside Liara, smiled at her with that perfect, crooked smile, eyes dark and dancing.

"I'm always coming back," Shepard whispered as she caressed her cheek, leaned forward to bring their lips together. The words were soft and warm and full of hope, underlain by steely determination, exactly like Shepard herself. "I promise."

But the moment their lips touched, Shepard burst into a thousand tendrils of black and red mist, tendrils that slipped through Liara's desperately reaching fingers, that faded away into nothing in the space it took to breathe, leaving her to weep, broken and alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was lucky enough that two lovely and talented artists drew snippets from this chapter.  
> First up is soulfate, [who sets the scene](http://soulfate4-2.deviantart.com/art/An-Unwelcome-Dusk-317456343) for the first part of the chapter. After them comes bakathom, making me feel like a complete monster by [covering its ending](http://bakathom.tumblr.com/post/33049206403/more-so-this-one-time-i-drew-fanart-comic).


	10. Aethyta

It was seven days later, and the camp was a different place. Liara had... Well, truth be told, Aethyta still didn't know exactly what the kid had said or done in the meeting hall after they'd landed, but it had been damned effective. She'd smoothly stepped into the gap Efrosyni had left with her passing, and the camp, in turn, hadn't known what hit it.

They had an abundance of clean water now that they didn't have to boil and filter first, courtesy of a pair of purifying units taken from the freighter's cargo hold. There was even enough of the stuff that there was talk of setting up a bathing block, an idea met with what Aethyta would charitably call 'delighted squeals'. Truth be told, she'd kill for a decent shower herself or - oh, and now that was a heavenly thought - a long, hot, relaxing bath, with a good vid and bottle of red and lots and lots of suds, and maybe even someone to rub her back and shoulders. She ached at the end of most days, the unnatural cold of the false winter seeming to linger in her bones. Old age: the ultimate kick in the quad.

They had food, too, enough to fill everyone's bellies in the short term, even if it did come mainly in the form of MREs from their ship and non-perishables pulled from demolished shops and warehouses, and the ruins of nearby homes. Communications-wise, a tenuous link to the outside galaxy had been established, though it was limited to low-bandwidth transmissions, sent and received in a burst two or three times a day, whenever anyone activated the mass relay. A tenuous link, too, had been established with the other three refugee camps they'd located within the city limits so far. Liara had already convinced one of the groups to amalgamate with theirs, and expected that the other two would soon follow suit. She'd reasoned - and Aethyta had agreed - that the overall benefits provided by the population increase, particularly in terms of able bodies and diversity of skill sets, would more than offset any problems it caused.

Under the kid's direction, work parties had almost finished rearranging the camp into a series of loosely-spaced rings, the outermost and innermost heavily fortified. It was an oddly reassuring layout, one that had seemed familiar in a way that Aethyta hadn't quite been able to place, until Liara had shown, with a few quick sketches on her datapad, how the oldest cities on the planet had evolved from ancient villages laid out in a similar fashion. The dead centre of Armali - until the Reapers, at any rate - was the great Forum, which had once been not unlike the meeting hall at the heart of their camp, which doubled as the dining hall by night and now trebled as the crèche by day.

Those asari who weren't busy rebuilding and refortifying the camp were sent out on scavenging parties, after food and clothing, weapons and communications gear and anything else that seemed useful. The ones who couldn't - or wouldn't - do either of those tasks were put to watching the walls, freeing their half-dozen frazzled commandos for other vital work, or to supervising the children as they went about the simple tasks assigned to them in turn.

Liara worked them all hard, and worked herself hardest of all, to the point where Aethyta was fairly certain that the flimsy little cot she'd set up in the empty cargo hold saw precisely zero real use. At daybreak, Aethyta invariably either found her daughter hunched over the terminals arrayed beside her cot, or saw her out training with the commandos. After that, she rarely saw her at all but in glimpses, running from this project to that dispute, running out with the commandos and running back in with the scavenging parties. She didn't creep back to their freighter until after dark, until well after everyone with a lick of common sense had already gone to bed, and twice so far Aethyta had gotten up in the small hours of the morning to answer a call of nature and caught her back in front of her terminals, doing Athame knew what.

Aethyta hoped those late-night, slightly furtive sessions had rather more to do with the recovery effort here and less to do with the... other thing that she, personally, tried not to think too much about, in case her half-formed speculations crystallised into an unpleasant certainty.

Improved as it was, the camp still wasn't perfect, not by any means. Sanitation was still an issue, with the bulk of their waste going straight into the river. Liara had been uncomfortable with that, apparently concerned about anyone downstream, until Aethyta had drawn her attention to the bodies and worse floating in the murky waters. The bodies themselves, of course, were another real concern. Efrosyni had made sure to clear away and dispose of any in the area immediately surrounding the camp as a priority, but the city itself remained choked with the dead, asari and Reapers alike, and that was exactly the sort of thing that led to the outbreak of disease. And they didn't have a long-term supply of food, not yet. There wasn't anyone with any agricultural experience in any of the known camps (not that they actually had anything to grow in any case) and scavenging was difficult, dangerous work that could only last so long, provide so much.

And, for all the buzz of activity and burst of tentative optimism within the camp and the jobs thrown her way to keep her busy, Aethyta was left feeling very much out of place. For a start, the entire camp, barring the kid and the commandos, had been rather more than slightly horrified by the prospect of letting her, a matriarch, do anything remotely dangerous - and therefore fun – again, especially after some complete cow whose name she hadn't caught had suggested that Aethyta, at over a thousand years and counting, might very well be the oldest asari left alive on the planet, or even in the entire Republics.

Now _there_ was a really fucking cheery thought.

If she'd been a better matriarch, she'd have been able to talk them around to her way of thinking. They needed all of the firepower they could get, and fighting was one thing she'd always been good at. It was in her genes. But she'd never had any patience for the endless, back-and-forth, passive-aggressive varrenshit and slight-of-hand manoeuvring most of the others her age seemed to delight in. And so, instead of making her case in a reasoned fashion, she'd lost her temper with the lot of them, the vote along with it, while Liara covered her face with her hand, in despair or disgust Aethyta couldn't say.

And that was reason number two for her discomfort, right there: by rights, it should be her out there, running the show, or, better yet, Benezia, or even one of the older matrons. There was no denying that the kid was good at it, as Aethyta had known that she would be, but maidens who were barely old enough to vote shouldn't have to be responsible for guiding and protecting and knocking some sense into the thick heads of what would soon be over one thousand people. That sort of thing was pretty much what matriarchs were _for_.

But if Aethyta had never been a very good matriarch, Liara, by all accounts, had never been a particularly good maiden. And, if part of Aethyta felt deeply uncomfortable about letting her youngest shoulder most of the current burden, another part of her enthusiastically cheered her on. Liara was _making_ something - a spectacular something - of herself and helping her people rather than wasting her maiden years stripping or drifting or worse. Yet, if Aethyta looked on with pride, albeit tempered by worry, Benezia watched their daughter with a kind of hesitant bewilderment, as if she were not quite willing to believe the evidence of her own eyes.

Benezia herself, of course, was reason number three.

It wasn't just that she was the Ex of Exes, with all the baggage that implied. Nor was it just that the promised part-time babysitting job had effectively become a full-time one. And it wasn't just that, between Benezia's history and her own recent outburst, most of the camp wanted as little to do with the pair of them as possible. It wasn't even just the certain knowledge that she was woefully unequipped to help Beneiza deal with whatever she was trying to deal with, and that she'd seen enough trauma cases in her lifetime to know that her usual 'toughen the fuck up, princess' approach was typically the last thing needed.

It was that Aethyta was spending virtually every waking _and_ sleeping moment in the company of her ostracised Ex of Exes whilst said Ex was struggling to stop herself from completely coming apart at the seams. Aethyta wasn't sure if she wanted to hug her or slap her half the time, and frankly, wasn't at all sure which approach Benezia would have welcomed more. Part of her former bondmate seemed to actively want some sort of, well, _punishment_ for everything that had happened, as fucked up as that was, while the rest of her seemed to want to hide, or fade away into nothing rather than face reality.

Aethyta really was too old to have to deal with all of that shit and everything else besides. As that motherless pyjack in the meeting hall had pointed out, she was over a thousand, which was many more years than most asari actually saw, for all their theoretical lifespans. Life was full of dangers large and small, and, combined with the risk-taking and general stupidity of most maidens, only maybe one in a thousand actually made it to the matriarch stage in the first place. She'd gotten this far, but had, _maybe_ , a hundred years left, if she was lucky. By rights, she should be enjoying a long, leisurely retirement right now, somewhere tropical, spending her days spoiling her great-granddaughters and scandalising her daughters and granddaughters by fucking the twenty year-old turian pool boy senseless then turning her attentions to his older sister.

She didn't know what had happened to any of her daughters, apart from Liara, or to their daughters and daughters' daughters. Once it became clear that war was on the horizon she'd called in every favour she'd ever been owed, bribed and blackmailed and even gone to the (remarkably obliging) Shadow Broker, trying to get them all to someplace safe, but had lost track of them once things started to heat up. She'd always made sure that her daughters could take care of themselves, but... Damnit, she should be out there, looking for them, making sure they were safe, not stuck here, riding herd on Benezia T'Soni because her daughter was too damned busy to look after her herself.

Fucking Reapers. You'd think they could have waited until she was dead to try to destroy the galaxy. From what she understood, they were millions of years old. What the hell was another century?

Fucking T'Sonis. Why couldn't they have needed somebody else?

Fucking galaxy. Fucking everything, really.

"You're pacing," a quiet, low voice behind her noted.

She was too. She hadn't really noticed.

"Well, I'm pissed off."

When she turned, she saw that Benezia had seated herself atop a cargo crate and was watching her, half-wrapped in a blanket against the early morning chill. Her skin had an unhealthy grey undertone in the pink and orange light of dawn, making the blue of her eyes seem absurdly vivid. Her sleep had been broken by nightmares every night since they'd landed, Aethyta knew. Some started with whimpers and ended with screams that would have woken the entire camp, had they not kept themselves segregated by sleeping in the freighter. Camp gossip suggested that she wasn't the only person with that particular problem.

Aethyta wasn't entirely sure what their little outpost needed more desperately – someone who could fix bodies or someone who could fix heads.

"About the vote? Still?"

"You know me," she replied, starting back the way she came. "I hold grudges. Let 'em fester."

There was a pause, and then an even more quiet: "I do."

A hundred and ten years of grudge. Justified grudge, though. Wasn't it? Leaving her? Keeping her last daughter from her?

Of course it was.

"But I do not think that it is anger that drives your feet today, not entirely," Benezia continued, and Aethyta remembered that if Benezia T'Soni was an open book to her, then the reverse was true as well. "Aethyta, what worries you so?"

"Nothing," she lied, and it was a bad, obvious lie to her own hearing.

"Please, I would help if I could. I... owe you that much, at least." Aethyta only realised that she'd come to a halt when she felt the gentle hand on her arm.

"Please," Benezia repeated.

When Aethyta turned to face her, it was the old Benezia, for the moment, standing before her, not the fragile shell the Reapers had left behind. The Benezia whose compassion and patience and generally kind nature had so often been Aethyta's undoing, once upon a time.

It was her undoing today.

"I'm just thinking about my girls," she muttered, shoulders sagging. "That's all."

Understanding dawned in those bright blue eyes.

"You've not heard from them?"

"Not a whisper," she sighed. "I tried to get 'em somewhere safe, before things went completely to crap, but so many places we thought were safe weren't. One of the colonies I wanted to send them to got hit pretty hard."

Benezia's hand slid down her arm until it reached her own, took it and squeezed it gently before letting it go.

"Go, then. Find them. You want to, and no-one would begrudge you."

She wasn't quite able to stop the short, bitter bark of laughter.

"You were at the meeting, right?" Benezia had been there but silent throughout, eyes downcast; she'd abstained from the vote when it came. "I'm too 'valuable' to be let out of the camp or up onto the walls or even down to take a piss on my own. Goddess, I feel like a caged varren."

"You certainly pace like one." This observation was actually accompanied by the ghost of a smile, the first genuine one Aethyta had seen from her since she'd woken up. "Well, perhaps they would begrudge you then. But that sort of thing has never stopped you before. Go anyway."

"I can't justify taking the freighter," she said with a shrug, which was true, "and we don't have anything else with enough fuel to leave the system. And, besides, I promised the kid I'd help keep an eye on you. How're you doing today, anyway?"

And, just like that, the old Benezia was gone.

Her eyes fell, and she retreated back to her former seat atop the cargo crate, wrapping herself again in the blanket. It was somehow painful to watch her fold back in on herself, especially in light of her smile, seconds before, and Aethyta sighed.

"Shove over," she said, and planted herself beside her former bondmate without aplomb. The crate wasn't quite wide enough for two, and she only had half a seat, but it'd do for now. "And give me some of that blanket. It's cold enough out here to freeze your tits off, and that'd be a damn shame."

A bit more than a century ago, such a statement would probably have been delivered with a mock-leer and met with an eye roll, perhaps accompanied by a tolerant smile. Now it was given awkwardly, and met with stoic silence, though Benezia did unwrap enough of the blanket from herself to give Aethyta half. Aethyta studied the her face in profile, noting the fatigue in her eyes, the clench of her jaw, the stiffness in the graceful arch of her neck and the slight layer of dust and ash and other grime they all seemed to acquire after more than a few minutes outside.

"Look, I don't wanna give you mixed signals or anything," she continued, "because what's done is done, but I'm not just sticking around here because the kid asked. We had a hundred good years together, and I think that means something, no matter how it ended. I'd like to help you, if I can," she concluded, deliberately paraphrasing Benezia's earlier words.

Benezia did not look up, but clearly spotted the parallel.

"The debts are mine, not yours."

"I'll be the judge of that. Talk to me."

For a long moment, there was only the sleepy clatter of the camp as it began to wake and prepare for the new day and the distant gurgle of the river on its unhurried journey to the sea. Then Benezia sighed and leaned in towards her, hesitantly, as if expecting to be pushed away at any moment, but Aethyta let her come, not moving until her former lover's head was resting on her shoulder, nestled against her neck. Only then did she move, and it was to carefully wrap an arm around her, pulling her closer. They still fit together seamlessly, like they always had.

Silence again reigned for a time.

"It hurts when I try to think," Benezia finally confessed, voice sad and tired and barely audible. Aethyta said nothing in return, waiting. She might not always have the words to reply, but she'd become a very good listener over the years, and was practised in creating silences that others wanted to fill. Benezia, she knew, would fill this one eventually, and, almost a minute later, she did.

"At first, I had thought that the pain was a good pain. My mind healing from the... conditioning. I thought that it would get better with time. And distance. But it's not. It's getting worse. Sometimes I just want to scream with it."

"Then scream."

"Aethy-"

"I'm serious. It might help. Sometimes bodies know what to do better than brains do."

"You don't understand."

"So, help me then," she replied, more sharply than she'd meant to, and it was some time before Benezia spoke again.

"At times it is as though a thousand shards of ice have been driven into my skull, twisting and burning. At others, my head is caught in an ever-tightening vice. I... catch myself thinking in the ways it wanted me to think, or trying not to think at all, just so that it goes away for a time. It is the final stage of the process. I've seen it. The others with me, my entourage... Some succumbed so thoroughly by the end that they would not even eat or bathe unless instructed to do so.

"I... fear that end for myself. I've no right to, but I do. What good am I without my mind? What _am_ I? And so I fight. But I do not know how much longer I can continue."

"Long enough," Aethyta replied with a confidence she didn't feel. "It'll pass. Everything does eventually. You'll pull through."

"You don't know that."

"Sure I do," she said, forcing a smile as she chucked Benezia's chin, tilting her head up so that they were looking at each other again. "You're the only person I've ever met that could out-stubborn me when you put your mind to it. The kid said that you managed to fight the Reapers off while they were still alive. Now that they're dead, they've got no chance. You'll beat this."

Benezia's eyes held hers, searching. It was such a damned cliché thing to say or even think, but she'd always loved her eyes. They were as blue and changeable as the open sky and, if you knew the secret, you could read her moods by them alone. Today there was anguish and exhaustion and pain but, blooming behind all of that, cautious hope.

"You always were such a good liar," she said softly. "I can almost believe you."

"Believe whatever you want, babe," she said, and her smile this time was more genuine. "I'm more than a thousand years old. I usually know what I'm talking about."

"So you say." A pause, a fleeting, upward quirk of her lips, and Benezia was back, once more, for a few seconds. "Far be it from one as young as I to question the wisdom of the ancients."

"Ancient, am I?"

"By your own admission, I fear."

Even now, dirty, pale and underweight, eyes glistening with unshed tears, Benezia was undeniably beautiful. Maybe not in the pop-culture, supermodel sense, which favoured fresh-skinned, doe-eyed, underfed and under-dressed maidens, but in the classical one, regal, as if she were some throwback to the ancient merchant queens that had once ruled this city and others with guile and cunning and sex. Those high cheekbones, the proud line of her nose and jaw, the delicate markings that drew your attention to those bottomless blue eyes, the broad, dark stripe that highlighted her lips, soft and eminently kissable, the dappling that ran down the sides of her neck, around her perfect breasts, down the line of her stomach...

Benezia must have seen something of her thoughts in her eyes, because her own widened slightly and she pulled away, rising to her feet, turning away. Aethyta inwardly cursed, but let her go, needing the space just as badly. The kid was right, damn her hide: she still had feelings for Benezia, and they weren't all bad ones. Far from it, if protests from her body at the loss of contact with those soft curves were any judge. Goddess, she'd buried their relationship at least three times already, each time thinking it was for good. You'd think it could have the decency to stay dead! There was no future in it at all, just heated memories and regret, and she had enough to worry about without being distracted by either.

"You want to know what happened to your daughters," Benezia said abruptly, her back still turned. "I would know what happened to mine."

Aethyta stared at her, simultaneously annoyed and relieved that Benezia had deliberately gone for the one topic certain to drive a wedge between them, and done so in a manner designed to wound on multiple levels. Anger would easier to deal with. Hell, it always had been. She just needed to remember Liara, remember all of the broken promises, remember that Benezia had left her without explanation, without even a proper goodbye. Remember why Aethyta hadn't chased after her. Five minutes of fellowship was not nearly enough to wipe all of that away.

"She's thirty seconds away," she supplied brusquely. "Go ask her yourself."

"I've tried. She avoids my questions."

"Well, maybe you're asking the wrong ones then."

"If that is the case, then I don't know what the right ones are. I hardly feel as if I know her anymore."

Aethyta scowled, unseen, and stood herself, wrapping the blanket around her body like a cloak.

"I dunno know what you're complaining to me for." After all, it wasn't as if Benezia T'Soni hadn't made it abundantly fucking clear that Liara was _her_ daughter, not Aethyta's. Even offering the kid the opportunity to meet her father on her own terms had proven to be too much to ask. But, hey, if you could walk out on a bonding of a century without so much as a goodbye, what was another broken promise?

"I thought, perhaps, that you-"

"You thought that what? That I'd fill in the blanks for you?"

"You were present for the last four years. I was… not. "

Four years out of a hundred and ten. No, not even four years. You _might_ manage to stretch it to three, if you took it from the date she'd accepted the contract, but spying on someone from a distance hardly counted as having a relationship with them. And for a good chunk of those three years, Aethyta had honestly thought that her youngest daughter was dead. If you added up all of the time they'd _actually_ spent together before now, with Liara knowing what the relationship between them was, it'd come to less than a standard day.

"Well, it's not my fucking fault you got yourself put on ice," she snapped. "And it's not like you didn't have Liara all to yourself for more than a century. If you didn't learn how to push her buttons in that time, you did more things wrong than I thought. Grow a quad and ask her until she answers. Or don't. It ain't my problem either way."

The crack about her icing might have gone a bit far, she realised, when Benezia bowed her head and made no move to reply, and Aethyta felt an unwelcome pang of guilt that only made her more annoyed. She had a right to be angry without feeling bad about it, goddessdamn it. More than a right. But right here, right now, it'd only feed the part of Benezia that was looking for punishment. Either that or drive her further back into herself, and Aethyta probably wouldn't get any satisfaction from seeing one or the other.

Shit.

She sighed, ran a hand over the top of her head and crests and made a masterful attempt to force her anger back down to a slow simmer rather than a rolling boil. Her next words to her former bondmate, for all they were clipped, were level and bordering on unnaturally pleasant.

"I'm going to go see what new horror's on the breakfast menu. You coming or not?"

Benezia sighed herself but followed after, trailing a few feet behind in silence, head still bowed. They didn't speak again for the rest of the morning.


	11. Liara

"Delegation," Benezia said, her voice tired but laced with wry resignation, "is an art form, and one that you would do well to master if you intend to continue at this pace."

Liara's head jerked up from its resting place atop her desk, wincing as the tight, tender skin down the side and front of her neck pulled with the sharp motion. She winced again, inwardly, when a data stick slowly unpeeled itself from her undamaged cheek and fell, clattering away amongst the clutter surrounding the bases of her monitors. She touched her hand to her face then, feeling the rectangular indentation the stick left here.

And for one, long, horrible moment, she was a gangly thirty year-old again, caught staying up well past her bedtime and now due a lecture from her disapproving, exasperated mother. She blinked, opened her mouth to stammer out an excuse, and then, at the last second, remembered where, and, more importantly, _who_ she was now: Liara T'Soni, Shadow Broker, war veteran, elected leader of this encampment, chosen bondmate of Commander Shepard and a hundred other things besides. She did not make excuses. Even to her own mother.

Her mouth snapped shut again.

Still, falling asleep at her desk was a very bad habit, one that she'd been trying to break since her first years at university. Unfortunately, it was also one that had been not so much enabled as encouraged by the war; on the Normandy, Shepard, Garrus and Tali and the others had been in no position to judge the hours she chose to keep. Here and now, however, it wouldn't do to be caught napping in such a fashion. When you were the leader, you had to put on a strong public face. Moments of weakness - doubt, confusion, pain, sorrow, fatigue - were private. Shepard had told her once that people can only have confidence in you if you seem to have confidence in yourself.

At least it was her mother who had found her, and not someone whose heart she had to win.

"I do delegate," she countered after she'd regained her composure, only to have her protest undermined by a yawn.

The motion pulled uncomfortably at the right side of her face, much as her earlier movements did to her neck, and she repressed another wince. Asari healed, if not more quickly, than more completely than every other known species bar the vorcha, but the burns had been deep, the cuts to the bone, and they'd used up all of their miracles keeping Shepard alive. Without a dermal regenerative unit, it would be years, Karin had told her, perhaps decades, before the scars would fade and the skin fully heal over. A few decades, at the very most, of ugliness, discomfort and numbness, the loss of an eye and some fingers and teeth – Liara considered it all a very small price to pay. It was something that she reminded herself of every time she chanced to catch her own reflection.

"Not near as much as you need to. You patrol with the commandos, forage with the scavenging parties, oversee the building works, stand watch-"

Liara felt her eye narrow, more than slightly discomforted to realise that her mother was apparently tracking her movements so closely. She wasn't quite sure _why_ she was surprised to find out this was so - Benezia had always kept a very close eye on her, and it wasn't as if Liara was hiding most of her activities - but something about the realisation niggled at her nonetheless.

Moreover, she had not come so far, done so much, to stand being lectured like a naughty schoolgirl. She had experienced more, _accomplished_ more in the past four years than most of her elders managed over their entire lifetimes. She was at least their equal. But if she was going to stand up to the matriarchs when she inevitably came into conflict with them, she would have to lay the groundwork for it here, now, with the most intimidating one of all.

"Those things all need my attention," she said mildly.

"Perhaps," Benezia allowed, equally mild, "but not all of them to the extent to which you presently give it. Must you go out with the scavenging parties?"

"I spent almost fifty years working around ruins of one sort or another. I am the only person in the camp who's qualified to assess what buildings are and aren't structurally sound. There were several deaths and more injuries before I arrived."

For all her irritation, the words came out more brusquely than she'd meant them to. To cover her annoyance at her lapse, she occupied her hands straightening the clutter piled upon her desk. It was a poor setup indeed compared to her now lost facilities at Hagalaz, or even to her room on the Normandy, but she hadn't dared bring the bulk of her equipment with her. The handful of monitors, three communications terminals and a dozen scattered datapads and sticks were better than nothing, however, and what remained of her information network had been warned to expect disruption and delays, months of low-priority backlog.

When she looked back up, it was to find her mother watching her, an odd expression on her face. As Liara studied Benezia in turn, she was distantly shocked by how much the asari before her differed from the mother of her memory. Her mother had always been a beautiful, slightly distant figure with an enigmatic smile, a love of bright colours and a wardrobe full of flowing gowns. The asari seated across the desk from her was thin and pale and tired, her face drawn with pain, her shoulders hunched. She was dressed like the rest of them, in warm but filthy pants and jacket, the dark grey of which did nothing for her pallor. She was, as she had been that terrible day on Noveria, and again that first evening aboard the freighter, suddenly small and very mortal, not at all the untouchable goddess of her childhood.

But if that was what she saw in Benezia now, what did her mother see in her?

"I'm lecturing you again, aren't I?" Benezia said abruptly, her eyes falling closed, hand flying up to massage her temple.

"A little," Liara agreed, taken aback.

"I had not meant to. I only-" Benezia sighed, eyes opening, hand dropping. "I was concerned for you. I did not see you eat dinner."

Her hand fell further, to a jacket pocket, which produced a pair of triangular MRE packs. She checked the labels, then offered one across; Liara took it with the sudden realisation that she couldn't remember eating lunch either, and that breakfast had been a very long time ago indeed.

Liara's stomach growled at the thought of food, earning her a slight smile and an "I thought as much" before Benezia ripped the top off of her pack. It steamed, momentarily filling the cargo hold with the enticing smell of meat and savoury spices, but then MREs, in Liara's unfortunately extensive experience, always smelled better than they looked. Or tasted. Liara quickly tore open her own, and the two of them ate in silence, Liara trying not to stare when her mother, without any apparent hesitation or embarrassment, resorted to using her hands when the flimsy utensil broke, deftly scooping the hot morsels into her mouth and licking her fingers clean. Benezia had always been refined, fastidious.

"I did mean what I said about delegation," Benezia said carefully when they were done. "You're working too hard. You will burn yourself out if you are not careful."

Liara began to protest anew, but stopped, mouth hanging half-open.

This was Benezia T'Soni talking. She'd been counted as a leader amongst their people for centuries, since well before Liara had even been born. No, forget that: this was _her mother_ talking, offering her advice. How many times over the last few years had she longed for just five minutes of her counsel? And yet she was just going to ignore it, now that she had it?

Shepard wouldn't have, she knew. The Spectre expected all of her crew to provide her with honest opinions, honest advice, honest truth, even if it wasn't what she _wanted_ to hear. She'd hear them all out, weigh up this idea with that fact and those suppositions, and then decide on a course of action. Liara could do the same. She shouldn't dismiss things out of hand because she didn't like what she'd heard, or felt she had to prove herself more powerful and knowing than person who was saying them. If she let herself get into that mindset, she'd be no better than the thrice-damned Council.

"Perhaps," she conceded. "What do you suggest?"

Benezia was silent for a moment.

"You should look at how best to optimise your time. Take the scavenging parties. Were it not for your structural evaluation expertise, would it be necessary for you to accompany them?"

Liara frowned. It _had_ been necessary for her to go out with the scavenging parties. They'd needed her knowledge, her gun and, not to be immodest, the reassurance of her presence. She, on the other hand, had needed to get a feel for the lay of the land around them and an idea of sorts of things they might expect to find, in what condition and quantities. But was her presence still required? It she were being honest with herself then... no, it wasn't. Now that the commandos were rested enough to run the necessary security, she was really little more than another pair of hands to clear and haul once the structural survey was out of the way.

"Probably not."

Benezia nodded.

"Then your value to that task is as an assessor. Concentrate your efforts there, and give oversight of the scavenging parties themselves to another."

"I... suppose I could go ahead of them and do the survey work on my own-"

"With an escort," Benezia insisted.

"I'm not a child anymore," Liara shot back, her irritation of earlier returning. "I can take care of myself."

"As you were taking care of yourself when you were burned?"

She stopped her hand from flying to her face just in time.

"That was different."

"How, precisely?"

It had all happened so quickly, and yet it had seemed to be the longest minute of her life. In one heartbeat, she was running, her lungs burning, eyes streaming from the smoke, a few metres behind Shepard as the two of them and Garrus hurtled down towards the beam. The next, the Mako was pin-wheeling through the air in slow motion towards her, and then Shepard, _goddess_ , Shepard was _turning back_...

Mother and daughter, their gazes locked and held.

"Fine," Liara said shortly. " _With an escort_."

She redirected her attention to one of her terminals, flicking it over to the list of dossiers she'd been building on the camp's occupants, scanning for names, faces and skillsets until one jogged her memory. She brought it up and swung the monitor around so Benezia could see.

"Palla Liakos was an assistant to Matriarch Efrosyni's steward before the war. She has shown herself to be a competent organiser with a strong work ethic and a good eye for salvage. She seems like the logical person to take over coordination of the scavenging work."

"A good choice," Benezia said after a beat, barely glancing at the display, and Liara remembered that her mother had probably met the matron at some point, if only on a professional capacity. "She will do well, and I believe she will relish the distraction of responsibility now that," her voice hitched slightly, "Rosi is dead. Take her with you when you conduct your surveys so that you may plan together, and that she might learn from you."

That seemed reasonable enough. And it would make her feel better about taking a guard. Palla, for all her other skills, had shaky biotics and had never fired a gun in her life before Liara had made basic arms training part of the daily routine for anyone intending to venture beyond the compound's walls.

"Ok," she agreed, and turned the monitor back around. "Anything else?"

"Potentially. Have the commandos elected a leader yet?"

Liara frowned, not sure where this was leading.

"I don't believe so. But I don't see-"

"Then I would suggest that you approach the huntress you feel best suited for the task and ask her to call a vote. Sooner rather than later. With your backing, she will be more likely to be elected, and will be more likely to remain in place if already established before the Pishan camp arrives with their three. Do you have a preference?"

"Aurelia-" she began.

"-is very young-"

"I don't care how old she is."

She honestly didn't, and, frankly, given her own youth, could not afford to. If anything, she'd been trying to make a point of being age-blind when it came to assigning tasks, focusing instead on ability and leadership skills. Aurelia might be barely seventy, not even old enough to vote yet, but there was no denying that the girl was smart, skilled and resourceful, and had the respect of her fellows. She'd had to be good, to get herself and so many others through the invasion and bombardment where asari five, even ten times her age had failed.

"-and she is equally devoted to you," Benezia continued, slightly louder, over her objection. "You need only look at her to see it. Ask her to be the first member of your personal guard. I believe that she will accept, and it is the kind of work she is trained for. I can provide the formal words with which to extend the invitation, if you like."

"Personal guard?" Liara spluttered, more than a little taken aback. "I told you, I can-"

"Hear me out, please," Benezia said, one hand raised for silence, the other pinching the bridge of her nose. "You intend to retain leadership of the camp once the Pischan group arrives, yes? And if the Vael'Dra and Tetrallia camps join us as well? And any others we might encounter?"

"Well, yes," Liara admitted. She hadn't so much intended as _presumed_. "But I don't see-"

"Then you will need the guard," Benezia said firmly, her hands dropping once more to her lap. "Eventually, more than just the one. It is not just about protection, Liara, though I admit that I will feel better for knowing that you have it. It is about _status_. The guard says that you are too important to the community to be risked. It says that there are those who believe that service to your cause, your ideas is worthwhile endeavour. That others feel you capable of leading."

"You had a whole platoon at one stage," Liara remembered.

Benezia had always had an armed escort, back as far as Liara could recall. Her childhood had been full of serious, armed and armoured figures training out on the balconies and in the gardens, stoic asari who'd turned every excursion embarked upon, no matter how minor, into a circus, if not an outright ordeal. Most of them had intimidated Liara dreadfully when she was little. Later, as a young adult, she'd railed against them for affording her only the illusion of privacy, and resented them for stealing her mother away from her ever more frequently. The last holiday they'd taken together, ostensibly a mother-daughter affair to celebrate Liara's fiftieth birthday, had included an entourage of almost sixty, and been cut short by some crisis or another back home. It was only when Liara had escaped to university the following year that she'd gotten free of them all, and confirmed her suspicions that few other asari lived as they had, guarded and herded constantly.

Several of the other students had teased her mercilessly about her upbringing, when they'd learned of it and who her mother was. The poor little rich pureblood, who didn't even know how to make her own dinner because there'd always been someone on staff. Go run back to your mother, they'd sneered. She nearly had, more than once, after her attempts to defend herself had backfired. In the end, it had seemed both safer and somehow less cowardly to lose herself in her studies instead.

"Yes," Benezia said with a sad smile, and Liara remembered, as well, that whatever entourage Benezia had taken with her after Saren was dead now, to an asari, with the possible exception of Shiala. However much Liara had resented them, they deserved their fate no more than her mother did. "And consider what that said about me and my place amongst our people."

"I thought a personal guard volunteered themselves," Liara said carefully, searching for a way out. Even if it wasn't completely unnecessary, she'd had enough of that sort of thing to last a lifetime. "Or were assigned by the city."

"Most, yes. But the one you wish to be your guard captain should always be asked into your service, for much the same reason you should ask the one you wish to lead the other forces to call the leadership vote."

"We cannot really afford spare anyone at the moment just to stand outside my door looking official."

"She will need not attend you all of the time, not yet. But if you do not choose a guard yourself and intend to stay in a leadership role, it is inevitable that the community will force one upon you, much as they are attempting to force Aethyta to stay behind the walls," Benezia said, not unkindly. "The outcome will be the same, but you will not have the choosing of those who watch your back. And, without a guard, you will have greater difficulty in convincing any other matriarchs you encounter to take you seriously. They _may_ elect to overlook your youth in dealing with you, but they will overlook you entirely if you do not present some visible representation of your powerbase."

Liara pinched the bridge of her nose with her good hand, unconsciously mirroring her mother's gesture of earlier. She could feel the beginnings of a headache. Goddess, but she hated politics. But what had she come here to do, ultimately, if not get involved in just that? If she were to effect any sort of change, she must give at least give the appearance of playing along with the system as it presently stood.

"Fine," she sighed, ungracious to her own ears. "I will consider it. What else?"

Benezia watched her for what seemed to be a very long time, eyes searching her face until Liara began to feel uncomfortable under the scrutiny.

"Yes..?" she prompted, to cover her rising discomfort.

"Liara..." Benezia began, her voice soft, gentle. "Why are you doing this?"

Liara felt her heart sink. This was going to be it, she knew. No more evasions. No more lies, other than the necessary ones, the ones she told everyone. Still, she tried, summoning up her best, most neutral expression.

"Someone has to."

"I know. But my question would be: why must it be you? You are so young, and I know that you have always hated politics." When Liara didn't immediately answer, she continued, in a much softer, almost pleading voice: "What did you do during the war, Little Wing? It seems that everyone in the camp knows but me. They treat you like a hero."

Liara wet her lips, her mouth feeling unaccountably dry.

"You have to understand that much of what happened aboard the Normandy is classified," she said slowly, carefully. "My role most of all. People... speculate."

"What, then, was your role?"

"Intelligence," she said, knowing that this was close enough to the truth to pass for it, and the official cover story besides. "Translations. Research. Some field missions. Coordinating the supply chain for the Crucible. And, well, I suppose you could call me Commander Shepard's second officer as well, after Garrus -Garrus Vakarian. Commander Shepard was the Spectre the Council, um, sent after-"

"I know." Her mother pressed her hand, almost absently, to her side where she'd been shot. "She is also the one they now call the 'saviour of the galaxy', is she not?"

"Yes," she agreed, knowing full well how the title would vex her beloved when she awoke, let alone the increasingly messianic way some people spoke of her. "She cured the Genophage and got the krogan to fight alongside the turians for almost the entire war, forced peace between the geth and the quarians and united the whole galaxy to face the Reapers. She was the only person to make it to the Citadel to activate the Crucible. Were it not for her, none of us would be alive today."

She was not quite able to keep the pride from her voice as she spoke, and found she didn't care. Shepard deserved pride, praise. Love.

Benezia was watching her intently again.

"Your wounds - from a mission?"

"I... was part of Hammer," she admitted, staring, not at her mother, but at the blank monitor array, at the memory within her own mind. _Screaming at Shepard, her and Garrus both, to go, go damn her! The Mako, crashing to the earth, knocking them both back, off their feet, the breath leaving her lungs in an explosion of air. A taloned hand in hers, pulling her upright._ "With Shepard. And Garrus. It was the final push. All or nothing. Garrus and I were caught in an explosion."

 _A lance of hot red light, cutting through the Mako like butter. Diving to the side after Garrus. Hearing the_ whoomph _from within the tank, the flare of orange light. Pouring everything she had left into her barrier through her out-flung hand, feeling it melt away under the sudden blast of heat and light and pressure. Darkness. Pain. Fear. Shepard-_ __  
  
She blinked, and there was a hand covering her own, with its missing and mutilated fingers, concerned eyes meeting her remaining one.

"Liara-"

"I'm fine. Sorry," she said, returning to the present and managing a wan smile. "Shepard made it in the end. She was the only thing that mattered."

She slipped her hand out from under her mother's with that and turned her attention back to her terminals. It was the work of seconds to load up a datastick with most of the material she'd excised from the pad she'd given her mother that first night.

"Here," she said, holding it out for Benezia to take. "This should answer most of your questions. Those that it can't... I'll answer what I can. Much of it is-"

"Classified. I understand," her mother agreed, taking the stick. There was another long pause, Benezia watching her carefully once more before she spoke:

"Aethy... Aethyta says that you have finally taken a lover."

"Yes," she said, feeling that she ought to be surprised or angered or even embarrassed by the new line of questioning, but finding none of those emotions within herself.

Another pause.

"It's this 'Shepard', isn't it?"

Mother and daughter, their gazes locked and held.

"Yes."


	12. Benezia

When she reached the end of the material, hours later, Benezia was left with but one question, a thought that circled round and round her aching head without ever coming to rest long enough to be answered:  
  
Was this her fault, too?  
  
It was so very hard to reconcile the serious, driven, _angry_ young maiden in the cargo hold with her daughter. Liara had always been serious, yes, even as a child, and driven too, if only in the pursuit of those things that interested her.  But, equally, she had been gentle and sweet-natured, slow to anger, quick to forgive and open in her affections - if slow to initially give them out. It was even harder to reconcile her shy, academically-minded Little Wing, a child who'd been timid to the point of awkwardness for most of her life, with the warrior lionised by the wartime press as a biotic powerhouse, someone who easily kept pace with battle-hardened Spectres and Special Forces soldiers, someone who was accustomed to command and making difficult decisions.  
  
No, that was not exactly true. It was not difficult to _reconcile_ the two versions of her Liara. By the end of her first pass through the material, the collection of articles and vids and still images had melded into one long, sad account of how her daughter had the last remnants of her childhood and innocence stripped away from her, by death, by deceit and by war. One could track the transition from sweet child to hard-eyed adult over the too-few years, needing only a little imagination to fill in the gaps. What was difficult, however, was _acceptance_.  
  
Was this her fault, too? Another life she had ruined in her pride?  
  
Noveria was the start of it; that much was plain. Or even before that, on Therum, where Liara had been when Benezia had suggested that Saren bring her daughter to her.  Of all the myriad esoteric things in the galaxy she could have developed an interest in, Liara had managed to pick the one on which the Reaper's return had swung.  They would use her, as they had used everyone else.

Benezia remembered the small part of her that had always remained herself, locked away behind the glass, weeping and cursing and screaming at the thought of bringing Liara into the waking nightmare her life had become, but to no avail. She had been unable to stop herself from making the suggestion and the order, once given, was something else she had never found the strength to countermand.  She had not found such strength at all until she had come face to face with Liara for what should have been the final time, and then only when aided by pain and fear and the likelihood of her imminent death.  
  
Liara been saved from Benezia's own fate, at least, and Benezia supposed she owed the human Spectre something for that. But from that moment on, it was a downwards spiral, captured as a part of the public record for all to see.  
  
Still images, a few snippets of vid from not long after the... confrontation on Noveria, Liara looking lost and angry and so very, very young. An unlikely quintet of a krogan, a quarian, a turian and two humans attempted to shield her, with limited success, from a horde of asari from the Citadel's press corps. The six of them, together, were famous now, she knew: Commander Shepard and the Normandy Five, and not one of them still looked the same now as then.  
  
The awards ceremony, following the defeat of Sovereign and Saren, in full this time rather than the fragments the news services had broadcast. There was enough footage available for Benezia to realise the smiles from the recipients, Liara included, were forced, angry, their acceptance speeches short and ghost-written. A journal article, from not long after, and several informal notes, published to extranet, forums hinted at an attempted return to normalcy: Liara's ongoing attempts to decipher several prothean data discs evidentially found during their travels. And then...

Disaster. The death of the first human Spectre, the destruction of her ship. Liara, alone amidst a sea of uniformed humans, wrapped in a blanket, staring without seeing at a human-style mug held between two hands. Liara, exchanging a hug with the quarian, tears in her eyes, her face aged and haggard.  Liara, the quarian and the turian beside her, stoically sitting at the back of a funeral party, surrounded by black-clad and uniformed humans, listening to a speech being given by the woman who would become the second human Spectre.

Duty. Honour. Courage. Friendship. Loss.  
  
A little less than two years on Illium – Illium! -of all places, working as an intel broker, just as Aethyta had said. And, just as Aethyta had said, Liara seemed to have lost her way whilst there. The reports of her time on the lawless planet were a disturbing and confusing mess of gossip, lies, speculation and precious little truth, charting her absolutely meteoric rise through the ranks of Illium's information brokering fraternity.  

Her rapid ascent was at once a vindication and source of deep concern. Benezia had always known that Liara would go far, if only she could be dragged away from her history books long enough to engage with the people around her. She was so _smart_ \- and that wasn't just a mother's pride talking - and had a gift for making connections and spotting patterns within the greater whole that matriarchs seven or eight times her age would envy. It was little surprise that she had been so very good at her second choice of profession.  
  
But _information brokering_! It was a dirty, dangerous profession, skirting on the very edges of legality and seen by many as just one step above smuggling or stealing or slaving. And it was also a role that called for a ruthlessness that she would not have thought her Liara, her gentle, kind-hearted little girl, capable of.  And yet there was ruthlessness, even a kind of _brutality_ hinted at in the abrupt end to the sad affair.  The return of the supposedly dead Shepard and the death of Spectre Vasir.  Bombings.  Murders. Liara's own supposed death.  And, Goddess above, it was, all of it, laced persistent rumours of some sort of a feud between Liara and the _Shadow Broker_...  
  
Was this her fault, too? Yet another crime to be laid at her feet?  
  
Or was it this Shepard's?  
  
She felt the echo of anger, again, at the thought of the human Spectre, and was not sure whether it came from within her true self or not. But if Benezia's actions might have started Liara's descent, then Shepard's had continued it, driven it to its conclusion. The events leading up to Saren's defeat would not have been enough to drive Liara to such depths, of that Benezia was certain, but grief might - grief and despair and loneliness. To open her heart for the first time, for Liara, who was so shy and sensitive and insecure at the best of times, to finally understand the joy that comes from being in another's arms and thoughts, and then to have that wrenched away from her barely a heartbeat later, to have no-one there to guide her through her grief and share the burden of her pain -   
  
And then it turned out that Shepard's death had been another _lie_ , and all Liara's suffering for naught. Were all humans so cruel? The Spectre had dragged Liara to Noveria and forced her into a situation where she had to shoot her own _mother_ , where someone with the barest flickerings of compassion would have left her in a place of safety. She had, too, brought Liara to her bed and stolen her heart, only to fling it aside like some worthless bauble when she no longer had need of it.

But Shepard had evidentially come to need her again, her skills and knowledge, and had come back, faking Liara's death so she could be safely stolen away from Nos Astra. And Liara, for whatever reason, had gone with her, taken her back. Her voice, when speaking of the human, was laced with proprietary pride and wonder.  
  
From there - and the exact timeline got somewhat murky - Liara had gone to a classified facility attached to the Prothean archive on Mars, in the human's home system. It was there that she'd made the discovery that Benezia knew she would go down in history for. No wonder the others in the camp treated her with such reverence: from everything she had read and heard and seen to date, the Crucible was the only reason why any of them were still alive. On the tide of victory, after the war, Liara had been revealed publically as its discoverer and chief translator. Staggering to think that without her daughter, without the childhood obsession Benezia had worked so hard to dissuade, the galaxy would likely have fallen.  
  
And that was but the half of it. Liara, fighting on Menae. Liara, talking with refugees on the Citadel. Liara, at a war meeting with Spectre Shepard, Garrus Vakarian and the heads or de facto heads of several governments.  Liara, the subject of an in-depth, interactive profile by an award-winning turian journalist, lauding her transition from academic to warrior.

Battle footage from Eden Prime. Battle footage from Tuchanka.  Benezia watched, her heart in her mouth, as the tiny spec that was Liara, her white armour shining like a beacon in the ash-strewn waste, fell back as the great maw Kalros rose. Infrequent interviews with the Normandy's embedded reporter, Liara obviously not enjoying the experience but getting more comfortable before the camera each time. A 'Day in the Life' vid done by the same reporter, who had managed to balance the daily grind and stress of ship life during wartime with moments of optimism, including a human-style surprise party that the crew had thrown for Liara's one hundred and tenth birthday, over her laughing protestations - one of the few times that Liara's smile seemed genuine in the entire collection.

Propaganda, certainly, to various degrees and in ever increasing quantities, but the overall picture served to paint Liara as a hero second only to Shepard herself.  
  
Her daughter, the hero.  
  
Benezia allowed herself a moment to taste the words and savour the flicker of pride, before she remembered that all Liara had accomplished had been despite, not because, of her. Had she her way, Liara would most likely have been dead by now, the galaxy along with her. And, if Liara now served her people and engaged with them as Benezia had once so dearly hoped she might, it was not done out of any real desire to serve, nor any enjoyment taken from the endeavour. No, she felt that she _had_ to. A maiden of one hundred and ten, serving in the role of a matriarch because she didn't think there was anyone else in the community capable of leading in this crisis.  What was perhaps worse was that she was, so far, proving herself right.  
  
Her daughter might be a hero, yes, but she could claim no credit, and would live on knowing that it had come at a horrendous cost. Liara was old before her time, now, and suffering for it. Benezia was not the only one afflicted by nightmares, she knew, and she could watch Liara shutting down her emotions, one by one, every time they spoke until they were all stripped away to leave nothing but the ever-present anger that had replaced curiosity as her motive force. Her innocence was long gone. Her delight in the universe and all its wonders, lost. Her gentleness and kind heart ground away and buried, her affections guarded.  
  
Was this her fault, too? Or Shepard's? Or both of them together? She had no answer.

When she finally awoke the following morning, the sun was well past the horizon and Liara long gone. The night of restless sleep, plagued by nightmares wherein Liara stood in the place of Shiala and her other acolytes, combined with the late night itself had left her feeling so drained and bone-weary that she had seriously considered not rising from her bed at all. Two things, however, had stopped her from her passing the day in a sleepy, blessedly thoughtless stupor: the threat of still more unwelcome dreams, and the certain knowledge that, if she did not rise today, she would find it even more difficult to so on the morrow.  
  
Well, two things, and a third, if you counted Aethyta. Her former bondmate had spent the night in one of the communal halls rather than aboard the freighter, but had come by to check on her when she'd not appeared for breakfast. She'd departed again, upon seeing Benezia up and moving, with little more than a perfunctory grunt of ‘good morning', and had avoided her for the rest of the day. It seemed that she'd abandoned the idea of being her 'minder' in Liara's absence, at least for the moment, a decision Benezia wasn't entirely sure how to feel regarding. The return of such distance was undoubtedly a good thing, and yet the day was undeniably more of a struggle without her solid, unflappable presence, and even her occasional bouts of grousing.  
  
It was startling, truly, to realise just how much she'd missed Aethyta. It had all come back to her in a rush, the previous morning, how they'd used to be. The hundred sunrises they'd shared, each one marking the day of their bonding, and the untold number of sunsets. Ten thousand nights had been spent safely encircled in those strong arms, lulled warmth of her body, the slow rhythm of her breathing and the beating of her heart. Innumerable thoughts shared, playful flirtations and jests and subtle games beyond counting, debates that challenged and arguments that had always seemed to end up with them in bed together. Her body had remembered too, the warmth rising from her belly to cut through the lingering aches. And, for a few heartbeats, she'd seen the same recognition, the same remembrance in Aethyta's eyes.

It had been too much to bear, and she'd been forced to pull away from the comfort provided before she did something rash. She simply had no right, as Aethy herself had said. She had no right to want her again after she had cast her aside, not now, not ever, and certainly not just because the ground was quicksand beneath her feet and she wanted something stable to hold on to.  
  
But she missed Aethyta all the same, almost as much as she'd ever done during those first few difficult decades without her. And without her to trail after here, through the camp, Benezia felt... lost. Aimless. Purposeless. And lonely. Of all things, she felt lonely. The other residents regarded her with nervousness, if not suspicion or outright hostility, and she could not bear to meet their eyes, most times, lest she saw the pity or the accusation there.

Yet, for all their discomfort, they were unwilling to let an able pair of hands sit idle, not when there was still so much to be done. Since they did not trust her to mind the children, nor to sit watch upon the walls or tally stores, she had found herself drafted into a construction team the moment they'd spied her, sitting alone and staring silently up into the grey, ash-laden clouds that blanketed the once pristine sky. The work was hard, especially to someone for whom gardening had been the closest thing to manual labour ever undertaken, but oddly relaxing. She could lift and carry and hold under the direction of others without needing to think about anything other than the task at hand, and the burn of exertion, the ache of her muscles, was strangely sweet. And, as that rose, the pounding in her head slowly diminished.  
  
That the work was rewarding as well helped.   
  
By the time they'd finished the project, some unknown point in the late afternoon, the mood in the camp was positively buoyant, so much so that even Benezia could not help but be affected by it, to some small degree. A cheer had gone up when the last piece of piping had been laid, and another once the final tests had been completed, the last leaks plugged. A laughing, jostling queue had formed not long after, its members joking with one another as to who had dreamed more of this moment over the past weeks or, in many cases, months.  
  
A shower. A simple dream, perhaps, but a dream nonetheless, and seeing it achieved was cause for hope and celebration.  
  
Benezia, one of the last to take her turn, sighed with something approaching satisfaction and ducked her head beneath the hot spray, feeling some more of the tension leave her body along with the layers of accumulated grime. She hadn't bathed since the morning after her reawakening, the freighter’s small shower unit having been quickly stripped out for use by the wounded and ill in the medical tent. She hid a smile when a trio of small children ran by, squealing and slipping and trailing soapy water, and exchanged basic pleasantries with a matron who, up until now, had nothing for her but silence and dark, suspicious looks. It was, she knew, the first conversation she'd had with someone other than Liara or Aethyta since awakening; she could hear the rust and surprise in her own voice. Further down the undivided, open-air block, a maiden and matron whose names she did not know coupled quietly in a cloud of steam, dark eyes and wandering hands ignored by all with practiced ease.  
  
She was just debating finishing up, torn between the soothing water and the knowledge that her allotted five minutes was long over (though no-one had seemed to mind overruns so far), when she spotted Aurelia hastening past the block in the direction of the unofficial barracks, her arms full of white and blue armour. Seconds later, Palla Liakos and Liara herself entered the showers, talking animatedly. Palla stopped abruptly when she caught sight of Benezia, but Liara continued on, oblivious or affecting such, and stepped up to the shower to Benezia's right. After a beat, Palla followed, taking the final unoccupied station, one down from Liara's own.

"I see that you took my advice," Benezia murmured. Commandos would only handle and service the armour of their sisters in arms, or the one they were sworn to protect.  
  
"It was good advice, even if I didn't like it," Liara shrugged, and then sighed in pleasure, eye falling closed as the first drops of hot water began to fall. Benezia took the opportunity to glance her over; Liara's armour had hidden more scars than she'd realised, some old and faded, some new and livid like the ugly burns, standing in even starker relief. Of greatest concern was the fist-sized, skin-coloured dressing that that sat above her hip on her stomach, matched by an identical one, sat slightly higher, opposite on her back. What had done that Benezia shuddered to think, and absently touched her own side, feeling the new, raised scar there.

"Goddess, but I've been looking forward to this all day."  
  
"You had this planned?"  
  
"I offered the construction group a choice of three projects," Liara said, lathering up carefully. "I cannot say that I’m particularly surprised that they picked this one."  
  
"It has made many people happy."  
  
"You included, I hope." Liara glanced over at her and smiled. "You're looking better."  
  
"I am feeling somewhat better," she conceded, feeling she ought to say more but not quite knowing where to begin. This was not the forum to talk of what she had learned last night, nor was it the venue to discuss… other things. Liara, fortunately, filled the silence for her.  
  
"If this is the kind of result we get, I suppose I should begin to give the builders more autonomy too. I don't suppose you'd be interested in taking charge of them..?"  
  
"I think not." Not now. Perhaps never again. Just thinking about it made her heart race, her head hurt. Her mind was clouded, her judgement compromised; she should not be trusted.  
  
Liara nodded, but didn't seem surprised.  
  
"And I suspect that Aethyta would tell me to do something anatomically impossible if I asked her. Well, I’m sure there’s someone who will be good at it." She frowned and glanced around. "Where is Aethyta, anyway?"  
  
"I do not know. I've not seen her since breakfast."  
  
Liara's frown deepened, and Benezia could all but see her file the tidbit away for future consideration.  
  
"No matter," she said after a moment with a shrug, and returned her focus to her bathing. "While you're here though, I do have a question, and I think you're the only person here who might be able to answer it."  
  
"You know you may always ask," she replied immediately, intrigued despite herself.  
  
“But you may decline to answer,” Liara completed the phrase for her and smiled again, but the edge of it was somewhat grim. "Or I may not like the one you give.  Under what circumstances is an Ardat-Yakshi permitted to return to the homeworld?"


	13. Aethyta

"That's the best you've got?" Aethyta sneered, spitting blood towards her opponent's feet. "My old granny could hit harder than that, and she's dead and buried."  
  
The krogan charged at her with a roar, urged on by the jeers and laughter of the others in his company. Aethyta held her ground until he was almost on top of her, then ducked under his swinging, grasping arms. She pivoted, then, as he thundered past in a spray of mud, and kicked out, hard, with an added biotic flare, taking him in the back of the knee. She heard the crack and watched him stumble, and knew that she'd found her mark. There weren't many weak points on the krogan body - the knees and elbows, those recurved shins, the eyes and, of course, the quad on the males - but they were there to be taken advantage of if you only knew how. Lucky for her, she'd been taught by the best.  
  
From there, the rest of the fight was almost too easy. Any given krogan would always have brute strength and mass over any given asari, but paid for it in speed and agility. She kept to his blind spot, behind his hump, as much as possible, focusing her attention on the same knee as before, working it until it could no longer support his weight. He made one last turn and lunge for her, and there was a dangerous moment when he managed to get a hand on her jacket and started to reel her in, but she slipped out of the garment, twisted, planted her foot solidly enough in his quad. He instantly doubled over, his breath left him in one pained explosion, and she met his head with her own when he tried to recover, straightening up. He blinked up at her for a few seconds in pained bewilderment, then his eyes rolled up into his head and he fell over sideways.  
  
The circle of onlookers erupted into cheers as she snatched her jacket back up from the fallen krogan, slipped it over her old black and gold leathers, and spat again, the gob of purple this time landing smack in the middle of her downed foe's back.  
  
"Right," she said when the noise had died down, cracking her knuckles and glaring out at the krogan dotted amongst the circle. "Anyone else got a problem with taking orders from me?"  
  
When there were no takers - to her not insubstantial disappointment - she picked a pair of smirking krogan out from the crowd. "You two, get this sack of shit outta here. I want you other seven back up on the fucking wall. And the rest of you," she finished, rounding on the asari in the circle, "the show's over. Get back to whatever the hell it was you were doing."  
  
The crowd quickly dispersed, chattering and laughing, the unlucky krogan dragged away by his heels by his comrades. Aethyta sighed inwardly. Put them to work, the kid had said. Keep them out of trouble, the kid had said. She may as well have said: Aethyta, go smack their fucking heads in. It wasn't that she _minded_ doing it – honestly, she'd been spoiling for a good fight for days now, to work off some tension- but the rest of the camp was getting antsy, and had reason to: krogan, in her experience, who'd been promised a fight tended to go looking for one when it didn't immediately eventuate.  
  
A hundred and ten of them had come down on twelve turian drop ships, with supplies enough to last them more than a month of hard fighting.  That made a hundred and five more than had been permitted to assemble together on Thessia since the Rebellions. At their head was the young krogan she'd recognised as Shepard's pet Urdnot: Grunt, the Tankborn.

He seemed like a good kid, from what little she'd seen, with a fairly impressive track record. You had to have serious quad to be accepted into Aralakh Company, let alone run it. They were heroes whose deeds were legend, the krogan that every krogan aspired to be. Her dad, whenever he got on the turps, could be goaded into singing about them, a little bit, and the great battles they'd had in that great, deep, rumbling voice of his.  
  
This wasn't Aralakh Company, though. From what she’d heard, that fabled group had been entirely wiped out at some point during the war. Instead, what the Urdnot Wrex, the cunning old bastard, had sent was a collection of krogan from two dozen different clans, each vying for one of the twenty open spots that would form the backbone of the Company when it reformed. Most of them were out there, now, with two-thirds of the commandos and the kid, hunting down those fucking banshees and other Reaper remnants. These ten, however, had been left behind to help guard the camp, a duty that rankled some of them even more than it did her. There was no glory in babysitting civilians. But, as her dear departed mother had told her more than once: tough shit. The galaxy was far from fair, and if you continued to bitch about that fact, ways would certainly be found to make it even more so. If Berskin Tarn and Gutnar Krig and the rest of them felt that guard duty was beneath them, then there was always the option of digging latrines or hauling the dead to processing or the pyres - or getting sent the fuck back home to Tuchanka in disgrace.  
  
"You've broken your nose again."

Aethyta cursed inwardly as Benezia stepped out from the dispersing crowd. She thought she'd spotted her, in amongst the circle of onlookers, but had been too preoccupied to pay Benezia any attention beyond that. She had, in fact, been trying very hard not to pay any attention to her at all for the past couple of days, working at her anger, nursing her grudges.  
  
"Had to let him get one good shot in," she shrugged, wiping some of the blood from her lips and chin with the back of her hand and flicking it away. "Would've shamed him too much, otherwise, and then we woulda had a different problem when he woke up." She paused and cocked her head to one side, watching Benezia even as she was watched coolly in turn. "Is the part where you tell me that 'violence is not the answer'? That 'there's always another way?' He was a krogan. Word'll get around, now, that causing trouble in the camp will lead to a swift ass-kicking."  
  
The pain was starting to creep in now as she spoke, from her nose and her jaw where the Tarn had landed his punch. She spat again, felt some of her teeth wobble when she probed them cautiously with her tongue. Could have been better. Could have been worse. But she was definitely slowing down. A decade ago, he'd never have managed to lay a finger on her after the first blow, let alone grab a fistful of her jacket. A decade ago, she wouldn’t have fallen on her ass fighting a banshee either.  
  
"Those arguments did not work when we were together, if you recall. I don't imagine they will start now." Benezia did not move, did not change expression. "Would you like me to set it for you?"  
  
She almost said no. She should have said no. But Nezzie had done this for her at least a dozen times, and the alternative was sitting down in front of a mirror and doing it herself, which had never gone well. Even with the integration of the Pischan camp, swelling their little village into a town of almost two thousand, they still didn't have any proper medicos.  
  
"Knock yourself out."

She found a seat for herself on the broad steps to one of the blocky, drab emergency shelters. The grey, unburnished metal of it was cold under her ass and mud-splattered to boot; the drops of rich purple blood that streamed from her nose to splatter against it seemed incredibly vivid as she bent over to one side and cautiously blew to clear it as best she could.  
  
"Charming."  
  
"Had to be done. You know that" she replied, straightening to find that Benezia was in the process of kneeling on the step below her. For one lovely moment, Benezia's tits, straining against the zipped-up, slightly too-small jacket, were at a perfect eye level. If Aethyta wanted to, she could lean forward, just a little bit, and bury her face between-  
  
Shit.  
  
This _was_ a bad idea. Her blood was always up after a fight, and she usually wanted nothing more than a stiff drink followed by a good fuck.  Or vice versa. Or a stiff drink _and_ a good fuck. Where had that bar been? The one with the wood counter and the sticky lapezberry liquor that she'd licked-  
  
Shit shit shit.  
  
She was a matriarch for Athame's sake, not some randy matron. There was such a thing as self-control. And she was still royally pissed off at the asari to whom that magnificent rack belonged. Never mind that some of the best sex of her life had taken place after or even _while_ she'd been fighting with-  
  
Shit. Shit shit shit.  
  
Aethyta turned her head and spat again to cover her thoughts. This was insane. No, wait, it wasn't insane - it was _pathetic_. Lusting after the fucking ex. She just needed to get her nose dealt with, then go find someone who'd be up for a good fuck. Someone else. Maybe one of those nice krogan boys would be interested in a different sort of a tumble. It'd been at least five years since she'd had a krogan.  
  
"Are you alright?"  
  
"Fine," she said shortly. When she straightened herself again, Benezia had, mercifully, finished settling, sitting back on her heels so that their faces were level instead. Her face held cool concern, nothing more. "Just hurts. Hurry up, will you?"  
  
Benezia arched one of those stupidly perfect eyebrows with its stupidly delicate markings, but made no comment other than: "Very well."  
  
Benezia's hands found her face, gently tracing the line of her nose to find the breaks. Her fingertips were cool and smooth and steady. Aethyta closed her eyes as one of those hands fell to her cheek, then to her chin, turning her head this way and that to examine her in profile, trying not to remember where else those deft fingers had touched her before.  
  
"It looks to be a simple break. One or two manipulations, I think." The hand returned to her nose, fingers firming up either side of where it most throbbed. "On the count of three."  
  
Goddess, she'd always loved that voice. Benezia'd always had so much control over it too. She could project enough to be heard clearly across a room packed full of chattering airheads and drop back down to a whisper in the same breath, pitched so low that you and only you could hear the remark that followed.  
  
"One..."  
  
Maybe... Maybe they _should_ just fuck. Take the edge off. Get Benezia T'Soni out of her system for once and for all. Avoiding her clearly wasn't working.  
  
Goddess, she wasn't seriously considering _that_. Insane. Pathetic.  
  
"Two..."  
  
There was a sudden increase in pressure, a sharp upwards spike in pain, and she felt as much as heard the horrible grinding noise and subsequent 'pop'.  
  
"Aaargh! Ow! Goddess! Fuck!"  
  
"Three," Benezia said dryly, releasing her.

"Fucking hell, Nezzie! You said _on_ three!" she accused, her eyes watering. "Fuck! Gah-"  
  
"You always tense up if I do the full count," Benezia said. She sounded almost... amused? Yes, amused. "Now, quit being such a baby. You wouldn't want any of those nice young krogan boys to see you cry."  
  
One of Benezia's hands found her chin again, tilting her head around to check her handiwork. She made a satisfied noise and released her.  
  
"Done in one?" Aethyta asked, gingerly feeling out the damage.  
  
"I believe so. You would, of course, do well to check it for yourself before using medigel to finish the job. I've not had to set a nose since Liara was twenty-five." When Aethyta looked askance, she elaborated, voice wry. "She was 'exploring the wild jungles of Nevos', I believe, and ran headlong into a tree."  
  
She had to chuckle at the mental image that conjured up despite herself. She'd gotten a holo or vid of the kid every few months, at first, and then one every year or so until she’d left home. Sometimes, there'd be a letter. Sometimes, there wouldn't.  
  
For the first decade, Aethtya had treated everything sent to her as an insult, salt rubbed into the raw, open wound. Benezia was flaunting the girl before her, the relationship with her lastborn that Nezzie had, for whatever reason, chosen to deny her. In the second decade, after the first hot flush of anger, bitterness and heartache had started to fade, she'd begun to wonder if the stuff Benezia sent her way wasn't actually some strange sort of almost-apology. Eventually, as curious as she’d been wary, she'd even written back. They'd only ever written of their daughter, the two of them, updates, advice, cordial arguments over schooling and more; tentative forays into the whys and hows of their own dead relationship had gone carefully unanswered.  
  
By all she'd seen and read, Liara, at twenty-five, had been a bright-eyed but gangly, uncoordinated little thing, all elbows and knees and skinny little neck. She was adventurous and insatiably curious, much as Aethyta's own girls had been at that age, but had an academic streak that none of her three possessed. Melania had taken too much after her mother to be interested in a formal education, Zara had been disinterestedly pursuing a fine arts degree for around two hundred years now, and Khyvos, well... Aethyta loved Khyvos dearly, but she'd always had the attention span of a salarian on speed. Privately, Aethyta had wondered, sometimes, how in Athame's name her third daughter managed to raise her own children, let alone do so while running a business.  
  
And, just like that, her desire fled. Her girls. Lunkheads the lot of them, but still hers. She could only hope that they were someplace safe. That they were still alive.  
  
Benezia rose, wiping her hands clean on a dirty grey pant-leg, and looked down at her. Whatever she saw there made her frown, ever so slightly, in renewed concern.  
  
"Are you certain-"  
  
"I'm fine," she replied in a tone that brooked no argument. Forget the fuck; she'd finish fixing her nose, find her emergency brandy stash and get quietly drunk.  
  
Benezia seemed unconvinced, but wisely elected not to press the issue.  
  
"You should get to the medical tent before the swelling becomes too severe," she said, offering her hand.

Aethyta took it after only a moment's hesitation, and soon stood beside her former bondmate, surveying this little section of the camp. A half-dozen blocky, grimy, grey and white emergency shelters, stamped with the Armali seal, sat in two convex lines that blocked the rest of the camp from view. The buildings here served primarily as storehouses for food and the other bits and pieces they'd been able to salvage, and spent most of their time sealed shut. A large, open patch of ground stood in between the rows, muddy from the morning's rain and two different types of blood, bordered by a crude path of cargo lids and lengths of plasteel and other flat materials, laid to keep feet and hand-trolleys free from the muck. It was certainly nothing to write home about. 

Wherever home was these days.  
  
Abruptly, Benezia frowned and stepped forward, out into the mud.  
  
"Do you hear that?" she asked, head tilted upwards to scan the grey sky.  
  
Aethyta bit back an inane 'hear what?' just in time, and cocked her own head to the side, holding her breath to better listen for anything out of the ordinary. After perhaps ten seconds, she heard it too.  
  
"One ship, I'd say. Maybe two" She cast about for somewhere with a better vantage point and was left only with the shelters themselves. Elsewhere in the camp, someone began to ring the warning bell - another of the kid's little, effective ideas. "Give me a lift, will you?"  
  
Benezia looked at her in incomprehension for a second, then shook her head.  
  
"I... don't know if I can anymore," she said, sudden nervousness in every line of her body. "I've not used my biotics since-"  
  
"Past time you started again then," Aethyta replied. "Dive back into the ocean. I just want to have a quick look."  
  
"I... Very well."  
  
Benezia exhaled and drew herself up into her preferred casting stance, side on, her knees bent, feet planted firmly a shoulder width apart, one arm loosely extended while the other was held ready, in a fist at her side. Aethyta turned to the shelter and tensed for the lift. Of the two of them, Aethyta was the better fighter by far – Benezia had little inclination towards violence of any sort by nature or belief - but Benezia was the better biotic. She matched raw power at least as great as Aethyta’s own with a finesse born of a lifetime's daily practice and study of both the modern and ancient arts. She could do with a flick of her wrist and a moment's thought what it took Aethyta a full arm and a minute's solid concentration.

The lift, though, never came, and when she turned back to find out what, it was to see Benezia frozen in place, body crackling with biotic energy.  
  
"Hey," she said, and then repeated the call, more loudly. When no response came, she took a couple of steps towards her, and realised, with a horrible sinking feeling, that Benezia was gone again, in the same way she'd fallen into memory the first night they'd landed. Her eyes had a fixed, glazed look to them, her chest rising and falling rapidly, the colour drained from her face. She was talking, though, this time, soft, frantic words that became clearer as Aethyta took another cautious step forward.  
  
"I can't. I won't. You won't make me. My daughter. I will not-"  
  
"Hey," Aethyta tried again, edging closer still, enough to reach out and touch her if need be. Though, she considered, remembering Benezia's reaction that first night, physical contact probably wouldn't be the best of ideas.  
  
The other matriarch's head jerked up as she neared, body straightening, face twisting into an uncharacteristic sneer.  
  
"Have you ever faced an asari commando unit before?" Benezia said as their eyes met, her voice oddly hollow and dripping with contempt. "Few humans have."  
  
"I'm not seeing too many humans around here-" Aethyta began, but Benezia didn't seem to hear her, reading instead off some internal script.  
  
"I now realise I should have been stricter with her."  
  
Aethyta frowned, puzzled.  
  
"What-"

The next thing she knew was pinned in an impossibly strong stasis field, and the moment after that she was flying back into the storage shelter. She didn't even have time to flick up a barrier before she hit the building with a resounding _thunk_ , hard enough to knock the wind clean out of her. She slid down the wall to land, wheezing, on her knees in the mud, shook her head to clear the stars from it and rolled to her feet, heart racing, a fresh wave of blood running from her nose, barrier up and ready for the next attack. Benezia, though, had turned away from her, bent over almost double, her hands at her temples.  
  
"Benezia?" she hazarded, not quite daring to move. "Nezzie?"  
  
"I- Goddess! I'm sorry. My baby girl. I'm sorry. I-"  
  
That sounded like her again, at least. Aethyta edged cautiously out towards her once more, carefully circling around to approach from the front rather than behind. As she did, she caught sight of the small audience the altercation had gathered, a group of kids and one or two maidens, lurking awkwardly. She sent them her best glower.  
  
"You lot - can't you see we're having a domestic? Scram."  
  
They did, hastily, even as a small shuttle came humming in, low overhead, reminding them all as to why the alarm bell had been sounded. Aethyta spared it the barest of glances, enough to note the Republics symbol embossed on its side. Markings like that never meant much, least of all in times like these, but it was a small reassurance, none the less. And a shuttle that size could hold maybe five people, in a pinch, anyway. With ten krogan and two commandos on site, anyone who’d come here looking for trouble would quickly find it.  
  
When she reached her former bondmate, Benezia was visibly trembling. The trembling only intensified when Aethyta slowly, carefully drew her up and into a light embrace, giving her every opportunity to pull away. Benezia clung to her instead, burying her head against Aethyta's shoulder while Aethyta awkwardly rubbed her back and tried desperately to think of something soothing to say. She'd never been very good at this sort of thing. Even with her girls, it had always felt so unnatural; when they'd come to her teary with dating trouble, for example, her instinct had always been, not to hold their hand, but to go out and kick the lout's head in.

Despite her silence, Benezia seemed to take something from the embrace, the shaking more or less coming to an end by the time the 'all clear' bell sounded. She pulled away, pressing a still-trembling hand to her temple. She looked confused, exhausted and deathly pale, splattered with drops of Aethyta's own blood.  
  
"Come on," Aethyta said, not unkindly. "Let's get you to somewhere you can lie down, huh?"  
  
Benezia allowed herself to be helped through the camp towards the freighter, both of them relatively oblivious to the ripple of excitement rapidly spreading through the camp. The ignorance did not last long, however, as the shuttle seen earlier had landed neatly beside their own craft. The shuttle's occupant stood at the centre of a growing crowd of asari, the krogan guards returning to their posts on the walls.  
  
When Aethyta caught sight of the newcomer for herself, however, she stopped in her tracks, her blood running cold.  
  
A Justicar. A fucking _Justicar_.  
  
Aethyta had only seen a couple from the Order in person over her entire lifetime, and she'd never relished the experience. They were worse than Spectres. At least Spectres had an understanding of moral ambiguity, and had to answer to the Council. A Justicar was judge, jury and executioner in one neat package, answering only to a black and white Code that was at least five thousand years out of date.  
  
It certainly didn't help that Aethyta had done a few things over the years that would put her on the wrong side of what passed for a Justicar's notion of 'justice'.  
  
The Justicar was scanning the crowed slowly, even as she exchanged greetings with those who'd come out to see her. Seconds later, however, she was starting towards the pair of them with long, confidant strides, the crowd parting before her instantly, silently.  
  
Aethyta's mind raced, trying to think of what she'd done that the Justicar could possibly know about. It was only when Benezia, at her side, drew herself up, drew herself away and stepped forward, that the realisation dawned.  
  
"Oh," she said softly. "Shit."


	14. Benezia

There should have been fear at the Justicar's relentless approach. Perhaps there should even have been terror. Instead, a strange sort of relief washed over Benezia, leaving an empty, hollow peace in its wake. Her breathing calmed. Her hands lost their tremble. Her legs felt stronger beneath her.  
  
An end. The Justicar brought an end to it all. A Justicar was a clean and efficient killer.  Benezia would not suffer, for all that she deserved to. She would, instead, have mercy, and her people would have justice, out in the open and in the light. She could answer for her crimes, legion as they were, and then she could rest. It would be over.

Benezia had not even realised how desperately she had wanted it to be so until she’d seen the flash of red and gold, and felt the crushing weight lift.

A brief pang of guilt rose at the thought, for those few she’d leave behind, but it fell as quickly as it had come. Liara had survived without her for decades, had survived the _war_ without her. Had grown up without her. She didn't need her anymore, and would recover from her loss better with a quick end at the hands of an unbiased arbiter.  Aethyta, who Benezia had so wronged, could be there for her instead, if need be. And Benezia would be able to hurt no others from the grave.  
  
She drew herself up, squaring her shoulders and raising her head, and stepped forward. Behind her, she heard Aethyta curse but ignored it, in much the same way she ignored the murmuring of the crowd and her former bondmate's sudden, hard grip on her arm and attempt to pull her back. Aethyta had time for one more curse before the Justicar reached them, Benezia shrugging herself free of her hand.  
  
The Justicar was not one she had known previously, of that she was certain - and thankful. It would be hard to forget such a striking, square jaw and full, pouting lips, or those incredibly large, pale, staring eyes. She was of an age with Aethyta, judging by how any markings she’d possessed had faded into non-existence, but more powerfully muscled; she moved with the arrogant grace and confidence of a warrior born and forged. Her armour was a rich burgundy red and well-maintained, cut low through the chest as was the custom for the Order, to allow her foes the chance to strike at her heart. The ornate golden gorget that bound her to her oaths glinted dully in the wan afternoon sun as she stopped a handful of paces in front of them and inclined her head in greeting.  
  
"In the light of Athame, I greet you, my sister," the Justicar said, her voice surprisingly light, with a trace of the accents of Serrice flavouring the words in the old priestess’s tongue. "I am Samara, a servant of the Justicar Code. I have travelled long across land, sea and void to reach this place."  
  
"I am Benezia, of Armali and Tis," Benezia replied, naming the place she called home and the city of her birth. "In the light of Athame, I bid you welcome, Samara, my sister. The Goddess has guided your steps to us. How may we serve your cause and your Code?"

The ancient words in the near-dead language slipped easily from her tongue, for all she'd had cause to say them but a handful of times. At least she _knew_ them, she supposed. Most asari these days knew only a bastardised, common-language version of the proper greeting for a Justicar, gleaned from over-hyped, poorly-researched vids. There was simply no need for them to learn. Justicars grew rarer by the century, and, in any event, were almost never officially given welcome into the sprawling cities where most asari resided, not anymore.  
  
She felt another brief pang of guilt with the thought. The language, the knowledge of such traditions may well die with her, now, along with the memories of her mother and mother's mother and so on down the line. She had not shared them with her daughter, and all of her acolytes were dead. But perhaps a clean break was what the asari truly needed. For too long had her people been held hostage to their past.  
  
"I have taken the Oath of Poverty. I may hold naught but mine arms and armour. I beg shelter and sustenance."  
  
"Then share with us the bounty of Athame and take your place by our fire. Our homes are open to you. The food of our table is yours to share. The water of our wells is yours to drink. Have you aught to offer us in exchange?"  
  
"I have taken the Oath of Preservation. I live only for the defence of our laws. I offer protection for the innocent, and to bring justice to the guilty."  
  
"Then walk amongst our people and come to know them. Our hearts are open to you. Root out the betrayer and the deceiver, the thief and the smuggler, the rapist and the killer. Bring them to justice in the light of Athame, so that all others may know peace and live without fear."  
  
She stepped forward, then, and held out her hands, palms up. The Justicar stepped forward herself and placed her own gloved hands, palm-down, within them. Together, they turned their hands over, and, with that, the greeting was done, and Aethyta was at her side again.  
  
"Ok," she whispered urgently while Samara watched them both with ice-blue eyes, "you've said hello. Now let's get the hell out of here."  
  
Benezia shook her head slightly, and ignored the repeated tug at her arm, keeping her eyes instead firmly fixed on the Justicar. She would face her fate with dignity and honesty. She would not flinch, nor try to flee.  
  
"I seek justice," she announced, in the modern tongue and a loud, ringing voice.  
  
"Benezia, no!" Aethyta hissed, but by then it was too late, as Benezia had known it would be.  
  
The Justicar glanced at Aethyta before replying.  
  
"What justice would you have?"  
  
"I corrupted my followers," Benezia said, still loudly enough for those around her to hear. "I have killed without cause. I have violated the mind of another. I have worked against my own people to serve my own ends.  
  
"I submit myself to your judgement," she concluded, and bowed, holding her hands out before her in supplication, palms up and crossed at the wrists.  
  
And that was when it all went wrong.

"You want her," Aethyta said, stepping smartly between the two of them, "you're going to have to go through me."  
  
Straightening, it was her turn to grab for her former bondmate's shoulder to try to pull her back. Aethyta was a born fighter, with a near perfect balance of aggression, adaptability, strength and stamina, but she was no Justicar, trained and sworn. And while she might have stood a chance against an initiate new to the Order, Aethyta had little to no hope of victory against one such as this Samara, of an age with her and hardened by centuries of following the harsh Code.

"Aethyta, stand down," she ordered as calmly as she could manage, even though her heart was suddenly racing within her chest. "This is not your concern."  
  
"You shut up right now, Benezia T'Soni," her former bondmate growled, glancing back at her. "I am _not_ explaining to the kid how you got yourself offed by a Justicar."  
  
The Justicar regarded the pair of them for long moment.  
  
"You speak of the events prior to Sovereign's attack upon the Citadel."  
  
Aethyta and Benezia spoke at once.  
  
"Don't answer-!"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Then Justice has already been served," Samara announced, turning for all in the crowd to hear. "The Reapers are dead."  
  
For a long moment, Benezia couldn't quite comprehend what she had just heard.  
  
"But I-" she began, but the Justicar held up her hand for silence.  
  
"I know something of indoctrination," she said, turning back, and there was a strange pride in her eyes along with sudden sorrow, "and the way it twisted the thoughts of those subject to it.  All reputable accounts agree that you fell under its sway. All reputable accounts also agree that you resisted, and that, without your resistance, Commander Shepard would not have found the Conduit in time, if at all. Any crimes committed in service to Saren and the Reapers were not of your making."

What remained of her calm fled like a startled _kielly_ , replaced by sudden desperation. The Justicar knew what she had done, but would not act!?

  
"No!" she burst out, pushing past Aethyta, wracking her brain, trying to remember what she knew of the Code, trying to find a way to frame her confession that would convince the Justicar of her guilt. "It was my fault! I led them all there! I should have known better, but I thought I was too strong to be swayed-"  
  
A warm hand clamped itself across her mouth to silence her, an arm wound about her waist, pinning one of her own arms to her side and pulling her back against a soft, strong body. She struggled, kicking out, wrenching her head this way and that, but was rewarded only by a grunt of pain and an inexorable tightening of grip, until she thought all of the air was going to be squeezed out of her.  
  
"Pride is a sin in many religions, but it is not a crime under the Code," Samara told her when Benezia’s struggling had finally ceased, the Justicar’s face devoid of expression. She then looked over at Aethyta.  
  
"I did not come for her, or for anyone else in the camp. I am here at the request of her daughter. Or, rather," she continued turning to the side and gesturing behind her, to a slender, nervous-looking matron in plain white and grey formal gown with a multi-coloured warning tattoo upon one cheek, "my daughter is here at the request of hers."

\---

"A Justicar! I can't believe you invited a fucking _Justicar_ here!"  
  
Benezia lay on her back, staring blankly at the grey ceiling of the freighter's lone cabin, and listened to the argument taking place just outside the door. Her body felt leaden, exhausted - a match for her heart - but sleep would not come.  She _ached_ too much for slumber, mind and body.  
  
"Shepard trusts Samara! She was part of her team when they went through the Omega relay."  
  
"Well, I'm not Shepard, am I? And I'm not the one fucking her either! Justicars. Are. _Trouble_! I can't put it any clearer than that, kid. Shepard’s a human - she couldn't have had any idea of what they're really like. And you're too young-"  
  
Liara had never raised her voice when they'd fought. She'd been all pouts and sullen looks, what words of defiance she managed said to the floor, and then often in a whisper. She had evidentially found her voice, however, while Benezia had been... away.  
  
"Do _not_ tell me what I am too young to understand!" Liara's voice rose and fell like a whip. "I have done more in the last four _years_ than most asari do in _four centuries_!"  
  
"And I don't doubt it!" Aethyta's tone was placating - but just barely. "I was _going_ to say that you're too young to _remember_ Justicar Nikania. She got it in her head that a whole damn colony world was populated by slavers, and slaughtered everyone over thirty because she thought they were 'unjust'. _Five hundred people_ and a Spectre died before she killed herself."  
  
"Was she right?"  
  
"No! Turned out that she'd been fed a load of bad intel. That's the thing with Justicars, kid - they're not like they are in the vids. They're brainwashed fanatics with a license to kill and a morality code that was outdated when my great-great grandma was still on the tit. They make mistakes, and when they go bad, they go _real_ bad, _real_ quick. And, hell, they don't even need to make mistakes for things to go bad on you. All it'll take is one wrong word from someone in the camp, and you'll wind up with a load of bodies on your hands and a smug Justicar. If I hadn't been there, your mother would have found some way she'd violated that goddess-damned Code in order to get herself killed."  
  
Aethyta had never liked Justicars, Benezia vaguely remembered, or other such 'over-romanticised, out-dated relics'. She'd never much cared for Spectres either, which Benezia had always thought odd and more than slightly hypocritical. Professionally, Aethyta had always operated outside of the law as often as she'd stayed within it, first as a freelancer and later as a covert operative of High Command. Aethyta was a spy, a thief, a saboteur and, when the mood struck her, an outrageous liar; a former stripper, a former merc, a former smuggler and more. She was the master of hiding in plain sight, her brash personality and unabashed fondness for brawling, drinking and casual sex fitting few people’s mental model of 'spy'.  But, beneath the bluster she was patient, methodical and whip-smart, as comfortable running long-term surveillance as enacting an explosive hostage extraction.  
  
They'd met, of course, on one of her jobs. Benezia had been the target.  
  
"Shepard trusts her and that is enough for me."  
  
"Well, bully for you. Just don't expect me to have anything to do with her. And you keep her away from your mother. I dunno about you, but I'm not looking to repeat this afternoon any time soon."  
  
"I'm planning to send Samara out with Grunt and his company tomorrow. They've fought together before; I believe that Grunt is looking forward to it."

"What are you going to do with the Ardat-Yakshi then? Send her out too?" A derisive snort. "Kid looks like she'd keel over if you farted in her general direction."  
  
"That 'kid' has a name. It's Falere. She has been through a lot, and she is stronger than she looks."  
  
"I damn well hope so. And you haven't answered my question: you sending her out?"   
  
"The monastery on Lesuss was self-sustaining. They grew their own food and - I am sure you'll be pleased to know - brewed their own alcohol. Falere has agreed to help us with growing food, if we can."  
  
"I'm no farmer, but I think we're going to have to hope for a change in the weather to get anything growing again. Or maybe some atmospheric scrubbers to get rid of all that fucking ash."  
  
"I know. I'm looking into it, and to alternatives. The Liveships are in the process of being dismantled, but Tali has agreed to send us some quarian hydroponics experts and equipment once they’re more settled-"  
  
Their voices grew fainter as she listened, and Benezia realised that they were moving away. She turned over onto her side, curled up into a ball and stared at the grey wall instead. Her thoughts were a dazed, muddled, painful mess, impossible to sort out. The words of seconds before mingled with other voices, some long dead, some demanding, some pleading, some screaming, all bouncing around inside her skull until her teeth ached. Fragments of memory, faces flashed behind her eyes every time she closed them. Saren. The ship. The Justicar. Shiala. Umbri. The rachni queen. Rosi. Liara. Aethyta.  
  
 _It'll pass_ , Aethyta had told her. _You'll pull through._  
  
She could not see how.   
  
She must eventually have slept for a time, for the next thing she knew was the rustle of blankets as the covers were slowly drawn back up over her, and a soft, low voice talking without any expectation of being heard. Benezia did not move, nor did she open her eyes, even when Liara carefully sat on the bed beside her and gently laid a hand upon her arm, above the bruises Aethyta had left.  
  
"I'm sorry," her daughter was saying, her voice at once distant and thick with emotion. "I do these things, sometimes, without fully thinking about the consequences. It was the same with Shepard. And then the… yahg. I suppose those both worked out in the end, but, goddess, it was a near thing! Both times.

“I guess... I suppose we can only hope that this works out too. But I don't think that Aethyta knows what to do about it anymore.  I don't really either. I thought, perhaps, you could work with Falere once she starts. You always loved to garden, and it is kind of similar. Growing things."  
  
A soft sigh.  
  
"I miss your gardens. I miss our home. I miss Armali and Thessia, the way they used to be. I miss being able to get lost in dig sites for months on end. I miss not having to worry about keeping everyone fed and clothed and tracking down relatives for orphans and arguing with matriarchs eight times my age and wondering whether or not Shepard will-" Her voice caught, her breath hitched, and it was a long, silent moment before Liara spoke again.   
  
"I love you, Mother, no matter what has happened. And I am here for you, as best as I can be."  
  
There was the press of a kiss on her brow, the shifting of weight from the bed, retreating footsteps and the swish of the door. When Benezia opened her eyes again, she was alone, with only the gloom of the cabin and the grey, featureless wall for company. There were no tears. She didn't think she had any left.


	15. Liara

It wasn't until much later in the evening - so much later, in fact, that virtually everyone else in the camp was asleep - that Liara finally found herself left to her own devices for more than five minutes. She'd actually had to order Aurelia away, to her own bed, to get it, ignoring the girl's protestations and wounded looks at Liara's continued refusal to let her share her sleeping quarters. Such as they were. It might have been the more conventional living arrangement, and certainly the one more in keeping with Aurelia's new role as her 'guard', but it was an imposition that Liara would resist as long as possible. She had always been an oddity amongst her people, shunning their communal spaces in favour of solitude, or as close to it as could be managed. She needed time to herself, isolation in which she could just sit and _think_.  
  
She was trying to do that now, bathed in the light of her monitors, sorting through news reports, reports from her agents, reports from the various militaries and more. But the screens had grown blurry before her eye before she was even a third of the way through the material, and she'd caught herself reading the same passages over again more than once without really comprehending what had been written there. She needed to sleep, just for a little bit. But there was still work to do.  
  
It had been an exhausting day, physically, mentally and emotionally. The physical aspect of it had been expected - one did not spend a day in the field with a group of battle-eager krogan and expect a garden stroll - but the mental and emotional had not. It had been nothing but crisis after crisis since she'd gotten the call to return to the camp, and difficult conversation after difficult conversation until she was tempted to give into her supposed krogan genetics and head-butt someone because it seemed like it was either that or cry from sheer frustration.  
  
She blinked and rubbed ineffectually at her eye, trying to focus on the news reports in front of her instead of the events of the day. Civil war on Tuchanka. She'd had most of it from Grunt already, but an outsider’s perspective never hurt. The brewing war was a relatively minor conflict compared to some that the krogan had endured, but it seemed so idiotic to win the greatest war the galaxy had ever seen only to fall back to attacking each other. But that, in some strange way, seemed to be the point. A few of the... _less progressive_ krogan clans had seen the first hard evidence of the genophage's cure in their sons and daughters and then looked about the galaxy to find all of the other powers, great and small, brought low. It was time to conquer again, they'd decided, time to put the proverbial boot back into everyone else.  
  
Wrex, thankfully, had disagreed. And, since he disagreed with the backing of most of the female clans, and was the one whose work had brought about the cure in the first place, he would win. It was really just a matter of time before he crushed the rebels utterly. Liara supposed it helped that he was, objectively, a great deal more foresighted and politically savvy than his opponents. His decision to reform Aralakh Company and send potential recruits off-planet for trials was clear evidence of that. Membership of Aralakh was an undeniable honour, one worth fighting and dying for, and so, in one simple, seemingly innocent stroke,Wrex had robbed the other clans of their best and brightest remaining warriors, including many a clan leader or warlord's son. That this meant those fine fighters were now under the command of one of his most trusted lieutenants, a member of his own clan, only would have made it all the sweeter.

Of course, if something were to happen to Wrex now...  
  
Frowning, she sent off a string of instructions to her three remaining agents on Tuchanka, and more to another couple who'd had dealings on the planet in the past. She then spent another half hour setting up new priority logic for Glyph to follow when dealing with news of Wrex and his immediate associates. When that was done, she closed the window and brought up the next.  
  
Aria T'Loak, the so-called ‘Queen of Omega’, had evidentially decided that 'Queen of the Terminus Systems' had a nicer ring to it. According to Feron's hastily-collated reports, she'd been cutting quite a swathe through the otherwise lawless sector, using her still imposing army of mercenaries to clear our Reaper remnants, capture planets and grind her few remaining rivals under her extremely fashionable heel. And, of course, she had devoted a not inconsiderable portion of her army and other resources towards finding and wiping out anything to do with Cerberus. One did not 'fuck' with Aria, as the saying went, and expect to come away unscathed.  
  
Liara was not entirely sure whether the other asari's ascent from interesting galactic footnote to genuine force to be reckoned with was a good or a bad idea, in the greater scheme of things. On one hand, Aria was a pragmatist who looked out for her own; the Terminus Systems might well benefit from some kind of centralised rule, and the rest of the galaxy might breathe a little safer knowing that someone was in place to rein them in from the worst of their excesses. On the other, Aria had never been a friend of any law but her own, and her rule might just mean that the surviving gangs of pirates, raiders and slavers would simply become bolder and better organised.  
  
On yet another hand, Shepard had always liked her, trusted her, seemingly despite herself. And Shepard was an incredibly good judge of character.

She'd continue with the wait and see approach, Liara eventually decided, and leave Feron and her other agents to continue funnelling resources out of the Terminus to Thessia and other needful places. There were ways and ways to deal with Aria T'Loak, if the situation turned for the worse. Her past was not as well hidden as she would have liked - not to the Shadow Broker, at any rate - and contained several things that the matriarch would certainly sooner see left buried. And, if she expanded too far, too quickly, she'd start getting pushback from the quarians and the geth, and eventually even the turians and the humans, trying to protect their vital remaining garden worlds.   
  
The report concluded with Feron noting that Zaeed Massani had been seen nosing around Omega. Liara sent back orders to facilitate his stay on the station and arrange the provision of any armaments he might require, and to, if possible, make arrangements for him to see Aria herself, if she hadn't picked him up already. The two shared a fierce hatred of Cerberus; Aria could no doubt make good use of him in pursuit of her vendetta, and anything that hurt the remnants of Cerberus was something Liara could get right behind.  
  
Liara closed her eye, pinched the bridge of her nose, and brought up the next report. The _last_ report for the night, she told herself. She'd read it over, think it over, and then go to bed. It was, however, by far the most depressing of the material she’d read to date: resource distribution within the Republics.

It both irritated and worried her that it was so difficult to get any sort of news regarding what was happening elsewhere on Thessia, let alone what was going on out in the rest of the Republics. She knew more about recent events on Earth than she did of those on her own planet! What news that did come through was bleak, evidence the Reapers had known their grisly business all too well. They'd targeted the major manufacturing hubs and garden worlds almost exclusively, bombarding them from orbit to leave them like they'd left Thessia - little more than smoking ruins, choked with billions of dead, facing a prolonged, artificial winter. There were reports of rioting - rioting! - in some places, starvation in others and the re-emergence of diseases thought long eradicated in still more.  
  
Those few places that had been spared the Reaper's full attentions were, in most cases, little better off. Few of the Republics' research stations, mining words and newest colonies had been self-sustaining; soon the survivors at such outposts would be starving along with the rest.  Many of those that were had been overwhelmed by an uncountable numbers of refugees, often to the point of collapse.  Those few places that _did_ have aid to spare were distributing it freely, but in such an uncoordinated fashion that some groups of survivors received more than they could possibly use while others went cold and hungry.

She was guilty of that herself, she realised abruptly. She had made a real difference in this camp, with her supplies and, dare she say, her leadership.  In doing so, she had also improved the lot of those living in the other camps within the city. But that was a handful camps out of hundreds, even thousands, and a few hundred people out of millions. And that was only if she looked to Thessia.  She'd had to start _somewhere_ , she knew. But should it have been here? This? Could she have done more good by starting elsewhere? Taking a different approach? Looking at the larger picture from the outset?  
  
Maybe her mother had been right about that too, about her trying to do too much here. Her other advice had been good. The scavenging teams were working as well under Palla as they'd ever done under her, the construction crews (quite perversely, in her opinion) seemed to accomplish more when she wasn't there to keep a watchful eye on their progress and the commandos had elected Dora as their leader at her suggestion.  And, of course, there was Aurelia.

Well, that was still taking some getting used to, but she had to admit that she was starting to grow fond of the younger asari's company. She was more than capable enough as a guard, even if she sometimes seemed to grow tongue-tied in Liara's presence, and had a fundamentally sweet nature that hadn't been entirely stripped away by the war. And Liara had to admit that having the commando check, repair and prepare her arms and armour for her saved time each day that could best be spent on other things.  
  
Like spending a day in the field with Grunt and his recruits.  
  
That, in hindsight, was a mistake - a big one - and not just because her body now trembled with exhaustion any time she even thought about moving. There were a dozen other, far more productive ways she could have spent her day, but the krogan had more or less expected her to come along with them.  She’d earned their respect before– what, with being part of the geophage cure team and fighting Kalros and all. Wrex had gone so far as to publically declare her an honourary full krogan and a  sister to his clan– but she needed to maintain that respect if she had any hope of keeping Aralakh Company in line here on Thessia.  Combat, showing them that her injuries hadn’t made her weak or soft, seemed the best way to do it.  She liked to think that she'd done Wrex and Shepard proud, and, in truth, had rather enjoyed the excursion.

Goddess, now _that_ was a disturbing thought: when, exactly, had she started seeing combat as _recreation_? And how much of that had factored into her decision to spend the day running and gunning instead of sitting and working?  
  
Perhaps she should have said no, and left the krogran in the capable hands of the commandos, found some other way to remind them of what she was capable of. She'd accomplished more at this terminal in an hour than she had in the seven she'd been beyond the compound's walls. And, if she had stayed behind, she probably would have been able to head off the afternoon's... unpleasantness.  
  
She glanced past her terminals and down the length of the empty cargo hold, towards the small cabin where her parents slept, as if her eye could pierce both walls and darkness. Shaking her head slightly at her own folly, she brought up the security monitor she'd installed in the room instead. Aethyta, judging by the slight wheezing through her re-re-set nose, was sound asleep in the cot jammed up tight beside the door. Her mother, though, lay back upon the single bed, staring at the ceiling, her eyes dark pools to the image intensifier and her face dead of expression.  
  
Attempted suicide by Justicar, Aethyta had called it, with all of her usual tact. Liara wasn’t entirely sure.  She’d known that Benezia had been struggling a bit since being brought out of stasis, but didn’t think that things were that bad. If anything, she'd actually thought that her mother was finally starting to put the guilt aside and rediscover some of her old self. Their talk, the advice, the way Benezia seemed to be finding a place in the community being built here, how she was finally interacting with people other than Liara and Aethyta, and Aethyta felt comfortable enough leaving her alone to do so.

But then again…Aethyta, as it turned out, had left her alone not because she’d felt comfortable doing so, but because she’d simply, if badly, needed a break. What to do about that, though, Liara had little idea. While Aethyta was more than right when she said that it was unfair to expect her to be at her side every moment of every day, Liara was far busier than she’d expected she’d be. They needed more people they could trust to watch her, to be there with her.  But, again, as Aethyta had pointed out, there were more than a few in their community who still saw a traitor whenever they looked at Benezia T'Soni; others remained wary of her or pitied her, neither attitude seemed likely to help things.

Putting Benezia to work with Falere might help until Liara, by some miracle, found someone else to help share the load. The matron was quiet, patient and disciplined, and knew all too well how the Reapers used and discarded their unwilling servants; it would, at least, fulfil the 'busy' side of the equation, and give Aethyta something of a break when Liara could not.  
  
But then, of course, there was the problem of Falere herself.

Liara sighed. For every asari who'd been happy to see the Justicar, there had been two who'd been... less than happy to see her daughter. She couldn't really blame them that much. Ardat-Yakshi, according to every piece of folklore, every ancient epic and every modern vid, were monsters; cunning, remorseless demons with an unslakable, uncontrollable urge to mate and kill. Recently discovered medical fact was so tightly bound up with more than fifty thousand years of fiction, religion and speculation that hardly anyone was sure where the legend ended and the disease began. Liara had remembered all of those legends when she and Shepard and James Vega had been creeping through the monastery, and had spent the entire mission wanting nothing so much as to bring the whole place down and flee. It was only later, when she'd been safely back on the Normandy, that she'd remember the research she'd done into Samara when the Justicar had first joined Shepard's crew - the broken voices on recorded conversations, the dozens of unread emails from sister to sisters and the terrible, horrible little list of abandoned possessions - and had gotten angry. She was a pureblood. It could just as easily have been her, dying in that cold, lonely place, so far from her home and everyone she loved.  
  
While she couldn’t blame them, not really, she had not dealt _well_ with those who had complained to her, both publically and privately about Falere’s appearance in the camp. She had been tired, tense and worried about her mother, and her temper had boiled too close to the surface. Even now, thinking about it made her annoyed, as much at herself as at them. Falere had left her home of hundreds of years to help the very same people who'd given her a choice between prison and death for a genetic defect they had little interest in curing; they should have welcomed her with open arms and showered her with thanks, not met her with fear and barely-concealed hostility. And Liara should have worked to ensure that was the welcome she received.  
  
On the up side, she did not think that any would accost the matron now, not after her outburst. On the downside, her 'honeymoon period', as Shepard would have said, was over. She knew enough to expect more of her decisions to be questioned, her authority to be challenged now. But that was really all the more reason to look at what other tasks and responsibilities she could delegate to better focus on the bigger picture.  
  
Tomorrow. She would start on that tomorrow. No more adventures.  
  
She stood and stretched carefully, flexing her fingers, turning her head and working her jaw and facial muscles as Karin had told her she must. Her missing fingers always itched prodigiously after she'd been working at her terminals for any length of time; she shook her hand out violently in the ultimately unfulfilled hope that it’d stop. She had just given up on that and was just preparing to lock down her rig for the night when she heard the airlock cycle up near the cabin, and the Broker interface automatically died, leaving only the news feed and public inbox up.   
  
"Justicar," she said by way of greeting as the other asari approached, the ring of her boots on the metal floor echoing around the near-empty cargo bay.  
  
"Please, it is Samara to my companions. And to my friends."  
  
"We're friends?" she replied warily, suddenly mindful of all Aethyta had said despite Liara’s own protestations of trust. Justicars were trouble. She’d thought that herself the night of the party on the Citadel, and avoided her where possible.  All it would take would be one wrong word...  
  
"You are a friend of Shepard's. Or," Samara said, cocking her head to one side as if to better examine Liara, "I am given to believe, more than her friend."

"More," she agreed, resisting the urge to sigh. After EDI's unshackling, their romance had been the Normandy's worst-kept secret. She'd overheard no end of gossip and, at times, extremely tawdry speculation, to say nothing of the jokes, smirks and knowing looks, especially after that last ever shore-leave on the Citadel. They'd managed to keep it on the ship, in Shepard’s apartment, and out of the tabloids, but it had been a near thing.  
  
Samara smiled, and it was like the sun peeking out from behind a storm cloud, a momentary burst that turned her face from stern and uncompromising to warm and welcoming.  
  
"Then I would call you friend. And even if not for that, I would still call you one for your defence of my daughter. Thank you."  
  
Liara blinked, taken aback.  
  
"I asked her to come here; I would not have done so if I wasn't willing to defend her. And, anyway," she waved her hand vaguely, recalling her earlier thoughts, "I am a pureblood. It could just as easily have been me. For such a supposedly enlightened species, we have many prejudices."  
  
"That we do."  
  
Liara stood awkwardly under the Justicar's stony-faced scrutiny, uncertain as to what she should do or say next, unable to pick up any cues from the older asari that would indicate how best to proceed. She felt the old, nervous flutter rise in her chest and quashed it as ruthlessly as she could, taking up her seat behind the desk to prevent herself from fidgeting. She gestured to the seat opposite, killed the monitors and swung them out of the way.  
  
"Um, thank you for... this afternoon," she began as the Justicar took up the other chair. "I did not expect for Mother to react that way."  
  
Samara shrugged elegantly, and threw up her one hand in a dismissive gesture.  
  
"She is far from the first. You might call it an occupational hazard. But over time I have found that those who seek me out, genuinely, to receive justice for their own crimes, are often those who deserve further punishment least. And what I said of Benezia was true. She, herself, has committed no crime under the Code that I am aware of, though I am certain that you will have difficulty convincing her of that fact. You would do well to keep her from me, for now at least."  
  
"Aethyta intends to. I am afraid that she does not much like Justicars."  
  
"A wise, if suspicious, attitude.”  Another sunburst smile, quickly gone.  “Aethyta is the one who protected her?"  
  
"I believe so. She is my other parent."  
  
"Ah. They are bonded?"  
  
"They were, once," Liara said. "Before I was born. Not anymore."  
  
"I see," Samara said, and that was that. Silence fell, and Liara found herself wondering if Shepard had to work at her conversations with this asari as much as she was having to.  
  
"Was there something that I can help you with, Justi- Samara?" she tried, dampening down the urge to fidget once again under the matriarch's piercing gaze.  
  
Now it was the Justicar's turn for hesitation, her eyes flickering away.  
  
"Yes. I wondered... I had wondered if you had any word on the Commander. The last I had heard, she was alive but mortally wounded."  
  
The words were soft and diffident, but suddenly, absurdly, it was all Liara could do not to cry. Goddess! And she had been so good today too, thinking about Shepard only as she had been or would be, not as she presently was. She felt the sting behind her eye and closed it, forcing herself to take a steadying breath. No, damn it all, she would not cry, not here, not in front of the Justicar, not in front of one of Shepard's crew. She refused to. Shepard would be fine. She would not cry. She had nothing to cry about.

When she looked back up again, Samara was watching her with concern and regret.  
  
"Forgive me," she said. "I did not mean to upset you."  
  
Liara waved her concern away with her damaged hand and stood, turning her back to the other asari so she could take another, deeper, steadying breath.  
  
"I receive regular reports," she said, distantly impressed by how level her own voice sounded. "She is in a coma. She received severe burns, multiple fractures, and many of her implants were too damaged to be salvageable.

"She will recover though. I am sure of it."  
  
"Then I am certain of it too." The Justicar's next words were more softly spoken still: "She is the strongest person I have ever met."   
  
"She is," Liara agreed.

A large part of that strength, though, came from those she chose to surround herself with. She had a gift for leadership, for inspiring others to her cause, but it was a gift that Liara did not share, however much she sometimes wished she might.  However much she needed allies.  
  
"I need your oath," she said abruptly, wheeling back.  
  
Samara blinked at her in surprise.  
  
"My oath?"  
  
"The Third Oath of Subsumation. To bind your cause to mine."

The Justicar’s surprised expression melted back into her serene mask, coloured by a hint of disapproval.

"That is not an oath to be given lightly, nor on demand."  
  
"You gave it to Shepard when you joined the Normandy after knowing her for less than a day."  
  
"Shepard's case was unusual. The circumstances were exceptional," the Justicar replied, folding her hands neatly in her lap as she regarded Liara with expressionless eyes. "Why would you require such a thing?"  
  
"Look around us, Samara," Liara said waving at the walls of the freighter as if they weren't there. "Our homeworld is in ruins, and a hundred more planets besides. You swore an oath to protect our laws and uphold our norms, but what are they, now, after all of this? Our people are _starving_ , Justicar.  Our children are orphaned, our leaders are dead and an entire generation of maidens has been decimated.  If these are not exceptional circumstances, I don’t know what would be."

To Liara's surprise, it was approval, not censure, that dawned in the Justicar's eyes, and the faintest hint of a smile crossed her lips.  
  
"Very well. I make no guarantees," Samara said evenly as she rose to her own feet, "but I will meditate on what you have said. I should have an answer for you on the morrow."  
  
"That's all I can ask for, really," Liara replied, suddenly aware of just how quickly her heart was racing, how weak her knees felt. "Thank you."  
  
The Justicar nodded.  
  
"You are welcome. And now, if you will excuse me, I think it is well past time for bed. You would do well to seek sleep yourself, I think."  
  
"I intend to, believe me. Sleep well, Ju- Samara."   
  
"Sleep well, Doctor T'Soni."  
  
The Justicar was almost at the airlock when she paused a final time and called back over her shoulder.  The words stuck with Liara, bouncing around in her head even as she stripped down and all but fell into her cot, leaving her feeling her oddly proud in their wake:  
  
"I think that Shepard has chosen well in you."

 

 


	16. Benezia

**Benezia**

* * *

_"It is smaller than I had expected," she said with restrained curiosity, examining the creature through the thick layers of glass and plasteel and reactive shielding._

_She had heard the stories, of course and seen the footage. She'd even seen flashes of the Great War through the eyes of her mother, who'd more than once threatened to take her unruly daughter to Suen and leave her there to be devoured. But Benezia had never thought to see one for herself. They were supposed to be extinct._

Rachni.

_The word was practically a curse. But the creature, if what Saren said was true - and she knew that he would not lie to her - held the key to their salvation. She needed that key, whatever the cost._

_The human female at her side wet her lips in a fashion that Benezia recognised as nervous, and tugged uncomfortably at the collar of her torn and blood-stained lab coat - a very asari gesture, to go with the high-necked cut of the coat. The arrival of the humans into the galactic arena was quickly altering virtually every aspect of life and society in some way, great or small; Benezia was reassured to see that the influence did not run one way._

_The rest of the pitiful handful of survivors, some six more of various species and genders, stood behind the two of them at a respectful distance - that respect ensured by the troop of armed and armoured commandos watching them with unguarded suspicion. More of Benezia's entourage stood around the room, some at doors, some with guns trained on ventilation and access shafts, watching and listening for any possible movement. The laboratory complex was completely overrun; they'd slaughtered dozens of the creatures just to reach this place, and their geth allies still more._

_"We, ah, we don't think she's fully grown yet," the human stumbled. "Give her a few years."_

_Benezia spared her a glance. The woman had provided her name - Doctor something or other - but she hadn't bothered to make a note of it. What was the name of a human, in the greater scheme of things? In a few short decades she'd be dead. She'd be dead even more quickly if Benezia did not get the information she needed from the captive beast. Indeed, the human was lucky to have survived this long with the rachni loose. Most of her colleagues had not been as fortunate._

Everything _her own thoughts came back to her, the barest suggestion of a whisper._ A name can mean everything. Her name is Doctor Gweneth Wouters. Remember it. She is old enough to have children of her own. Remember.

_She shoved the thought back down inside herself before it could be heard, and turned her attention back to the rachni. It writhed awkwardly within the confines of the observation chamber, clumsy and hideous, but appeared strong enough or her purposes. And, of course, it had been breeding. Saren would be pleased when she brought him that news. Even if the queen and its offspring could not be controlled - and, from what she had seen and heard here, that seemed likely - they could prove a valuable asset: the ultimate shock troops, wild and unpredictable, alongside the disciplined but unimaginative geth. Better even than krogan. The krogan were a dying race, after all._

_"They are supposed to be intelligent," she said, idly trailing her fingers across the outer wall of the containment chamber. "Have you been able to communicate with it?"_

_"She seems to understand a few words like 'food' and 'no', but if she's trying to talk to us, we're not hearing it. In all honesty, I think we're missing something fundamental. All of the records say that the ships they used in the wars had no communications equipment. It's always been theorised that-"_

_She let the exhausted human ramble on through her lengthy 'no' for a time, once again burying the internal voice when it whispered of another scientist prone to rambling, one near and dear to her heart. Eventually, though, she grew weary of the nervous chatter and held up her hand for silence._

" _That is a 'no'. Very well." She turned around and surveyed the assembled survivor with passing interest, and then returned her full attention to the human woman at her side. "You have asari on staff here, I see. Has no one attempted a meld?"_

_"A... meld?" The doctor blinked at her in incomprehension, and Benezia felt a surge of irritation. "You mean... That's the touch-telepathy thing your people can do, right? I thought that was only for, well, you know…"_

_She made a vague gesture with her hand, her skin colouring changing in a way Benezia had learned to associate with embarrassment. Her irritation deepened. What an ignorant, prudish child! And yet, apparently, she had been a leader here. Foolish. Unworthy. No wonder the rachni's offspring were lose._

_Someone behind her cleared their throat, and, when Benezia turned, she saw that the surviving asari had stepped forward. Benezia had not bothered to catch her name either, but the girl, at least, was one of her own kind, so she favoured the matron with a small smile._

_"Speak, child."_

_"Lady, we did talk about trying a meld amongst ourselves, me and Doctor T'Hova," she said, keeping her eyes respectfully low though her voice caught at the name of her colleague, "but we weren't sure it would work. No one has ever gotten close enough to a queen to touch its mind before, and every attempt to meld with the workers or soldiers failed. They're so... alien."_

_Benezia saw the unspoken implication all too clearly: it could be dangerous. Some thought that rachni had a kind of hive mind, shared across all individuals of a colony, residing in its queen. No asari had ever touched a mind like that. It might be incomprehensible or impossible to unlink from, or even prove to be so overwhelming as to reduce the unprepared mind to a quivering, non-sentient mess, like a Prothean Beacon might. The girl's decision against melding was as sensible as it was cowardly; she was on the younger side of matronhood, and would not have the required training, discipline and mental fortitude to make an attempt with any real chance of success. She was too young to know the intricacies of her mind as Benezia knew her own._

I know my own mind _the voice whispered again._ This is not it. This is not me. I must remember myself.

_She squashed the voice as brutally as she could, hoping that it would not stir again. The time was not yet right. But soon she must. Soon, or never._

_"I quite understand," she told the girl. "The dangers are great. It is not your place to make the first attempt. It should be someone who is older and experienced in such things."_

_Benezia didn't wait for any acknowledgement form her, but turned back to the human woman._

_"I will need to be able to touch the creature to initiate the meld. Restrain it. Do not use gas or any other substances that might alter its mental state."_

_The human woman blinked at her and tugged at the collar of her coat again._

_"Without gas? We'd have to go into the chamber and physically tie her down! Matriarch, with all due respect, you can't honestly expect me to risk my staff with that, not after all we've been through. You promised to help us-"_

_Benezia felt the anger that always seemed to be close to the surface of late boil up inside of her, abruptly flashing over into rage. Who was this child that thought to question her? Her! How dare she! The human_ would _risk her staff, even risk her own life if Benezia so desired it. It was the proper order of things. And if the miserable worm would not serve, then there was little point to her continued existence._

_She pinned the scientist in a stasis field with the curt flick her wrist. From there it was only the barest of efforts to manoeuvre the mass effect field up and around so that the hapless human hung suspended mid-air, her back pressed up hard against the containment chamber. Behind her, behind the glass, the queen surged and writhed, throwing itself up against the chamber's walls. The doctor flinched with each impact, the colouring of her face changing yet again, this time to a pale shade that indicated fear._

_"I think you will find that I can," Benezia said, her tone dripping with pleasant malice, "and do."_

_She slowly increased the pressure exerted by the field until the glass began to creak. The human's protests turned to whimpers, and then to pained gasps as she struggled to breathe as the field, the glass slowly crushed the life from her. Behind her, Benezia heard murmurs of discontent rising, and the_ smack _as someone was struck with a rifle butt. In the chamber, the rachni's thrashing grew ever more frenzied, the creature banging up against the walls of her cage again and again, harder and harder, until they fairly shook with each blow._

_And then the human went limp, suddenly and completely, and Benezia noted, with disgust, that she'd fouled herself too. When she released the field, the scientist slid down the wall like a rag doll, crumpling bonelessly onto her knees, her head impacting the floor with a solid crack._

_She rounded on the group behind her, her anger only slightly abated. The ragged band of survivors regarded her with a mixture of defiance and fear, the relief at their 'rescue' all but gone._

_"Restrain it," she told them. "I will not repeat myself again. And clear this filth away."_

The memory stayed with Benezia long after she had woken from the dream that recalled it. That memory, and the memory of what had come shortly after. The queen had fought against the intrusion into her mind, but she had been young, undisciplined, afraid and completely unaccustomed to such intimate contact with other, alien minds. Benezia had been none of those things. And she had not been gentle.

The recollection of how the queen's mind had shrank and fled from her touch had made her feel ill. But it was the memory of how she'd gloated, triumphant, even as she'd ripped the necessary knowledge out of the young creature's mind, that had seen her bent over the small galley's equally tiny sink for over an hour that night, shaking, sweating, body roiling with nausea. To hurt another so, and one so _young_ , and to revel in the doing of it; it was an anathema to everything Benezia had ever thought about herself.

She looked a frightful mess by the time her stomach had settled again, but couldn't bring herself to care about the fact. Aethyta looked a frightful mess too, with a black eye and the nose Benezia had re-broken having swollen up to twice its normal size, but she couldn't bring herself to care about that either. She did feel bad, for a time, for waking her yet again, and then for waking Liara too when she had appeared, stiff and sleepy, but then had come anger: anger at the pair of them for being unwilling to just leave her alone, anger at herself for letting them see her this way in the first place, anger at the Justicar for not doing her duty and, above all else, anger at the Goddess-damned human Spectre for not having been a better shot and putting an end to it, there and then, on Noveria.

With such thoughts circling around her head, and Aethyta's rebuffed attempts to pull details of her dreams from her, it was little wonder that sleep did not come again that night. Instead, she lay in the darkness with her eyes closed, one hand on her chest, feeling the new scar through the thin fabric of the beige overshirt she'd taken to wearing as sleeping attire. She'd never had such a scar before. Perhaps because she'd only been shot only once before, and had immediately received the best medical attention money and a very contrite city militia could buy or harangue. Now, she had four. One in her side, with a matching exit wound in the small of her back. One in her stomach, alongside her navel, still tender to the touch. One in her chest, over her right breast. A little bit lower, a little further to the right and the bullet that had made it might have struck her heart instead of her lung.

Aethyta had always had scars. They came and went as the years passed and as Aethyta took this job or got into that fight. Sometimes they were from gunshots. Sometimes, from knives or fists. Benezia had learned them all, tracing them with her fingers, brushing them with her lips, listening to the story behind each one, sometimes horrified and cringing, sometimes smiling indulgently, even laughing along with a lover who was waxing nostalgic. Once, when they'd first met, Aethyta had borne a perfect, slender circle around her left wrist, where her hand had been taken off by a monofilament wire and later reattached. Benezia had covered that scar with a bonding bracelet, patterned purple and blue on burnished bronze, with drops of onyx. The colours of life.

Their daughter had scars now, too. Scars and worse.

She would never be whole again.

When morning finally came, it heralded another cool, grey day with little to recommend it. Benezia might well have simply stayed abed had Liara not guilted her from it. She'd eaten breakfast too, for similar reasons, though she had little enough appetite, the two of them sitting down by the river, well away from the rest of the camp and its noise. She'd let Liara talk, listening with barely half an ear while she watched the brown water and the oddments floating in it pass by. Litter and other waste. Trees. A half-submerged skycar. Bloated, rotting bodies. It would be so very easy, she could see, to rise from her seat and walk out to join them. The waters would close in over her head and carry her out into the sea from which they all came.

What a strange thing it was, to accept death, to accept that you _deserved_ death, only to be denied it.

Breakfast done and discarded, Liara's hand lightly touched her arm. Benezia glanced down at it - her good hand, her whole hand - and then followed the arm up to the face of its owner, who watched her with concern.

"What are you thinking about?" Liara asked gently.

"Little enough."

The answer did not please her daughter. A frown marred the good side of her face, echoed imperfectly by the bad. It was still difficult to look upon her and see ruin where there had once been beauty, guardedness where there had once been innocence.

"Last night-"

"A memory," she said shortly, and turned to look back out over the river. "Nothing more."

"A memory? Of what?"

Benezia thought of Doctor Wouters, and remembered the sound her head had made as it struck the floor. She thought of the rachni queen, and the savage satisfaction of plundering her mind, of taking and taking and _taking_. She remembered the research team, the fear in their eyes and their pleas for mercy as her retinue had executed them, one by one, their usefulness past. Liara's anguished words, calling her insane, evil, just before Benezia had attacked her with intent to kill.

Had the capacity for such cruelty always been within her? Had Saren, had the Reaper simply awakened it? She had once believed that she'd known her own self as well as any asari could and far better than most; now she was no longer sure.

"Ruin," she said, and it was suddenly too much to look out upon the river, devastation where there had once been beauty. Devastation she had worked to bring about.

She rose, turned and strode back into the camp, having no destination in mind other than _away_. If Liara followed, she was quickly lost behind Benezia as she ducked and weaved through the makeshift streets and alleyways, pushing past those who blocked her way, ignoring their protests and odd looks. It wasn't until she reached the far wall of the compound that she stopped, startled to discover how her quickly heart was racing, fast enough to burst, how badly her hands trembled until she braced them against the rough block of concrete. She lowered her head and closed her eyes, trying to catch her breath, slow her heart, calm her body.

"Matriarch?" a tentative voice behind her said. "Matriarch Benezia?"

She took a deep breath in through her nose and let it out slowly through her mouth, trying with little success for more mastery of herself. Only then did she straighten and turn to face the intruder: the Justicar's daughter, the ardat-yakshi. The matron bore little resemblance to her striking mother, save for something about the chin and cheekbones, and the subdued colour of her markings. She'd traded her monastery robes for work clothes, similar to Benezia's own but in green and black rather than grey. On her right cheek she bore the livid triangular tattoo of red, green and white that marked her as a carrier of the lethal variant of the disorder. An ugly and unfortunate imposition, but a necessary one. Melds could not be permitted with one such as she on any level, no matter how shallow.

"I am she," she said. "How may I assist you?"

"My name is Falere," the matron said and smiled hesitantly - whether unsure of herself or unsure of Benezia, Benezia couldn't say.

Sudden shame washed through her, hot on the heels of that thought. How much of yesterday's confrontation had the girl witnessed? And how many others had seen it, see what was left of her beg a Justicar for mercy? She had lost control of herself and been manhandled away, like a child in a fit of temper. A strange tightness seized her chest, and for a moment she found it hard to breathe. How many had seen her? How many had heard of it since.

"Doctor T'Soni - your daughter," Falere continued, heedless of Benezia's thoughts, "said last night that you could help me get things started. Working on the farms and gardens back home was never my strongest point, but I think I know enough for us to manage for now, and Doctor T'Soni says you have a knack for plants."

Liara had not been wrong, last night, when she'd said that Benezia had loved to garden. It was the one hobby that had stuck with her throughout her entire life and travels. She'd always derived a quiet satisfaction from the first, sweet flowering of spring, or from seeing the seed she had planted and tended grow into a sapling, and then into a tall, strong tree. Even thinking of it now unbound the weight from her chest, let her shoulders un-tense so she could breathe.

She'd planted a tree for Liara, just before she'd been born, a towering, slender _cinsiri_ , blue-leafed and biotically charged, that sat at the heart of her favourite garden in their Armali home. It was an old custom of her family, with an old superstition attached to it. _Cinsiri_ lived roughly as long as asari themselves did; their ancient, animistic forebears had believed that such a tree and the one it was planted for were linked, the asari drawing strength from it for as long as both lived. Benezia written at length about the history and symbolism of it, once, and how the belief had later evolved into the tradition found in many Kysa and Oebera mountain tribes of using wood from the tree almost exclusively for funeral pyres.

Her gardens, the tree, were like as not dead now, along with the person who'd planted them. Her writings were dust on the wind.

"I do not know if that would be wise," Benezia managed eventually.

"I've lived at the monastery since I was little more than a child," Falere said, scowling, and there was repressed anger behind her words, "and I've been eligible to return here to visit for two hundred years. In another hundred, I might have been able to return permanently. I can assure you that I'm in complete control of myself."

"Forgive me child - that is not what I meant. I-" Benezia began, and sighed, pressing a hand to her head and the ever-present ache in her temples. "I am a tired, broken thing. I fear I would be of little use to you."

The anger in the matron's expression faded, to be replaced by understanding and something dangerously close to pity.

"Some help is better than none," she said evenly. "At least you could show me where everything is. I brought seed and spores and some tools along with us from home, but we'll need more than that. Especially if we're going to grow anything in this weather. I think we'll need greenhouses."

A flash of white and blue behind and to the left of the other asari caught Benezia's eye. When she turned her head to focus upon it, she spotted her own daughter, watching them from the shadowed alley between two sets of stacked shipping containers. Falere, puzzled, turned to follow her gaze, but as she did so, Liara stepped further back into the shadows and vanished from sight.

"I suppose I can do that, at least," Benezia agreed quietly, turning her attention back to Falere, and Falere's to her. "Follow me."


	17. Aethyta

**Aethyta**

* * *

 

"No, no, not like that," Aethyta said, examining her daughter's stance critically. "I thought you said you played skyball."

"When I was twenty," Liara said, a note of defensiveness to her voice. "And it was only for two seasons. I wasn't very good at it."

"Should I ask?"

The kid shrugged and glanced away, evidently embarrassed.

"I'll take that as a 'no'."

Without bothering to wait for a reply, she grabbed the Liara's arm and roughly shoved it up tighter against her chest, so that her upper arm was held more or less flush against her side.

"Here. And make a fist. A _fist_. No, your thumb goes on the outside. Goddess, do you want to break all your fingers? You can't just clench and hope."

Aethyta held up her own hands to demonstrate the proper technique, curling her fingers up tight to present the scarred, hard knuckles that had won her more than a few brawls and barfights. She nodded her approval when the kid emulated, if slightly clumsily.

Much of this morning so far had been clumsy, as a point in fact, and not just because Liara was trying to learn and lead with her non-dominant side. Aethyta had been appalled to realise just how little hand-to-hand training her youngest had. Liara could handle a gun well enough, and when it came to biotics she was clearly Benezia's daughter, but it was becoming equally clear that she had little more than the bare basics of unarmed combat.

It was an appalling oversight, as far as Aethyta was concerned. Absolutely appalling. She'd gone out of her way to make sure that her own girls would all be able take care of themselves, no matter how their theoretical attackers chose to go after them. And Benezia had promised to make sure that Liara would have all the tools necessary to defend herself. Even if Nezzie'd never been one for close combat herself, she could have at least gotten Shiala to teach the kid more than what she had now, which was little more than the ability to break a few common holds and fall properly. And, even if Benezia hadn't evidently broken that promise along with so many others, there was no reason why 'the Great Commander Shepard' couldn't have taught her girlfriend a thing or two. Wrestling outside of the bedroom could be almost as much fun as wrestling in it.

"Good. Ok, bend your knees a little. The idea is to push _up_ and across, not down like you tried it before. Get your legs behind it. There, like that. It's called a hip 'n shoulder for a reason. Ready? Remember, you wanna have both feet flat on the ground when you start the hit."

They started off lightly at first, just a step and a gentle bump. The kid, though, was a quick learner, and it wasn't long before she'd graduated from that to taking a few steps before applying the hit, and then on to a full-blown run. With the fifth such pass, she actually managed to knock Aethyta off her feet and onto her ass. A chorus of cheers went up from their small audience, even as she accepted Liara's hand up.

"Not too bad, kid. Not too bad at all," Aethyta said, dusting herself off and shaking the numbness from her own arm. "In another hundred years you might actually be a threat to someone other than yourself."

Liara returned her smile. With the good side of her face flushed with exertion and her pleased, slightly proud expression, she looked far closer to her actual age than Aethyta could ever remember having seen her before, outside of photos and vids. One hundred and ten. Barely even an adult. Hardly any older than the dozen girls who'd gathered to watch their session.

"If I am, it will all be thanks to my excellent teacher."

"Eh, well, we'll see if you feel that way tomorrow," she replied, waving the obvious flattery away, but pleased despite herself. "You'll be taking the hits then."

Liara's face fell slightly at her admittedly malevolent smirk, and she rubbed at her left arm, bare beneath a white tank top.

"Oh."

"Gotta be able to take the hits if you're gonna dish 'em out."

"I see." Liara's face fell even further, and it was all Aethyta could do not to laugh. "Can I at least wear my armour?"

"Nope. Kinetic barriers'll dampen the impact too much."

"Oh."

Liara would have bruises on top of bruises by the time they were done, Aethyta knew, maybe even a broken bone or two, but it was the best way to learn. It you could charge, full-force and fearlessly, at an armoured opponent while wearing little more than your skivvies, you could charge at anything. The same was true for the reverse. It was the way she'd learned to do it, from her mother, and the way she'd taught all of her other daughters.

"But if you can stand up to that," she conceded, taking a swig from her canteen, "then we'll see about starting on the biotics bit of it."

"I still do not see why we can't start with the biotics aspect of it first," Liara said sourly, even as she took the offered canteen. "It seems to me that that would be the most difficult part to master in any case."

She wasn't wrong on that account. The charge was one of the hardest techniques for any biotic to master, largely because the object you were attempting to move was yourself. Most asari found it doubly hard to use the charge in combat; their people had always felt most comfortable fighting at a distance, even when fighting amongst themselves. Aethyta was one of the rare few for whom it had come as naturally as breathing. Melania had taken to it as well, after a few false starts, but her other two daughters had struggled. Liara, she thought, could go either way. She could get herself into the right mindset, if their battle with the banshees was any indication, but it seemed to be something she had to work at.

"Sure, we could start with your biotics," Aethyta conceded, keeping her voice affable even as she rolled her eyes. "And then I could start explaining to your mother how I let you break your damn fool neck because I hadn't taught you the fundamentals."

Liara's face fell into a full frown, and she glanced over at the blocky alliance freighter that served as their temporary home and her 'office'. Aethyta knew the look, and the reason for it: the sun was well up and breakfast underway in the dining hall, and Nezzie was still in bed. Today would be a bad day, the second in a row.

Aethyta followed her gaze, her own frown deepening. The thing with the Justicar seemed to have knocked almost all of the remaining fight out of her ex. On good days, Benezia rose with the rest of them and tended to her own needs, but she was hard to draw into conversation, refused to speak in any detail of the nightmares that seemed to be getting worse, and was developing a marked and disturbing tendency to just sit around and wait for someone to tell her what to do. On bad days, it was a job and a half just to get her out of bed.

 _It hurts when I try to think_ Benezia had told her, what seemed like months ago. _I catch myself thinking in the ways it wanted me to think, or trying not to think at all._

When her eyes found her daughter's again, she saw her own mingled worry and frustration mirrored there. Aethyta had never liked problems that she couldn't fight, lie or fuck her way out of, and that left her with few options for dealing with this sort of thing. The options that she did have were proving ineffective - even her attempts to draw Benezia into their old, favourite arguments had been met with little more than a few unenthusiastic sallies or dull-eyed apathy. In some ways, Aethyta thought it would actually have been better if she was scheming to bring back the Reapers. Benezia would have seemed more herself that way, and it would have given Aethyta something to actually fight against.

"I think I've found Shiala," Liara said abruptly. "The surviving colonists from Feros appear to have wound up on Benning, and I suspect that she is still with them. If she is, I am going to try to convince her to come out here, even if it is only for a little while. Perhaps having someone else who was there with her through it all will help."

"It's worth a shot," she shrugged, and took the canteen back. "Don't imagine it could make things any worse."

Really, at the rate things were going, anything was worth a try. And Shiala was smart, capable and compassionate, and had known Benezia for almost as long as Aethyta herself had. She'd become one of Benezia's guards five, maybe ten years after they'd gotten together, and her student in earnest a decade or so after that. Personally speaking, Aethyta could take her or leave her, but the former commando had quickly risen high in Nezzie's esteem and stayed there.

"I certainly hope not."

Personally speaking, there were people whose location and continued survival Aethyta was a lot more interested in than Shiala's, whether she could help them out here with Benezia or not.

She wet her lips, suddenly uncomfortable.

"Look, I, uh, I don't want to keep pestering you about it, but I don't suppose you've heard anything about my three, have you?"

Liara shook her head.

"No, I'm sorry. But I haven't given up yet. Many of our worlds still don't have reliable communications, so there's every possibility that they're still alive, but unable to dial out of the system. We're getting more detailed reports every day as planets and outposts come back online. My people are still looking, and I am collating all of the information available about survivors into a single public extranet database and forum. As soon as I hear something, I will let you know. I promise."

'My people' she noted, and then pushed the thought aside.

"Thanks kid."

"Don't mention it. And, anyway, my motives are somewhat selfish. I would like to meet them. I have always wanted a sister."

"Have you now?" Aethtya chuckled. "Well, honestly, if you want someone to do your nails for you or paint your face or giggle with you over vid stars, you'd probably have better luck with my grandkids. Or even the great grand-kids. They're a lot closer to you in age. Mel's pretty much a matriarch herself now, and the other two ain't far behind."

It was only when Liara glanced down at her mangled hand, a slightly pained expression crossing her face, that she realised her mistake, and winced. She had her mother's beauty, did Liara, but delicate and refined where Benezia could be stern and even haughty. The war had changed that. Even Aethyta found it hard to look at all that burned, torn skin, sometimes, and she was half krogan; it couldn't be any easier to see it in the mirror day in, day out. Or to have to clean out the wound where your eye had been.

"I find it very hard to imagine any daughter of yours being particularly interested in fashion," Liara said, and the words had a slightly brittle brightness to them, "or celebrity gossip."

"You'd be surprised. Zara's always been a bit prissy."

"Is she the half-hanar one?"

"No, her dad was a turian. We were together for, oh forty years or so. Nice gal. Great ass. And the things he could do with his tongue kid, let me tell ya-"

A different pained expression took up residence on Liara's face, and Aethyta knew that she'd made the save.

"Please, 'dad', I really do not want to know intimate details of your…" she trailed off, visibly floundering for a suitable and, knowing her, non-'tawdry' term.

"Fantastic sex life?"

"… previous liaisons. Or current ones. Or future ones, for that matter."

"Suit yourself. But take it from me: prehensile appendages are worth their weight in gold, no matter what shape they come in."

She added a wink for emphasis, and was rewarded with an eye-roll skywards and a sigh.

"I shall be certain to bear that in mind," Liara said, and then glanced back towards the freighter once more. " I had probably better go and see to Mother."

"Sure you don't want me to take her this morning? I thought you were going over to Cianna today."

She had to make the offer, if just to keep square with herself, but, even so, she was secretly glad when the kid refused with a shake of her head.

"Cianna is tomorrow. I wanted to ask her about it, actually. My reports indicate that Matriarch Vibianna is the de-facto head of the council there. I seem to recall Mother speaking about negotiating with her in the past. She was never particularly enthusiastic about the experience."

There was the slightly hopeful twist to her words at the last of someone fishing for more information. Vibianna, though, wasn't a name that Aethyta recognised. She had to be someone who'd come to prominence only within the last century or so, after Aethyta had written off the whole politics thing as a bad job. Oh, she still voted, when the mood took her, and even - metaphorically speaking - stood up to argue her case when some particularly idiotic new proposal pissed her off, but, by and large, she'd been more than happy to consign her brief dalliance with that aspect of asari society to the dustbin of history. She'd never had the patience for it, all that passive-aggressive sniping and back-room dealing varrenshit and endless, _endless_ talking about how to keep their people relevant and powerful while not actually _doing_ a damned thing about it. There was only so much stupidity a body could take.

"Can't help you there. I had my fill of politics a century ago. Nezzie might well have something for you, if you can get anything out of her today."

"I suppose I won't know until I try."

"-said the merc to the high priestess." A the kid's blank expression, she shook her head and sighed. "Get going then. I'll see you later."

Liara collected her armoured jacket from the steps of an emergency shelter where she'd left it, waved a final farewell and then vanished through the freighter's airlock. Aethyta watched her go with a shake of her head. When, exactly, had her life gotten so fucked up? The Reapers had a lot to answer for. It was almost a pity that they were all dead so she couldn't make them pay individually for it.

She was pulling on her own jacket and counting the bruises on her arm when a small voice behind her cleared its throat. She turned to find a half-dozen of kids who'd been watching their morning's practice, clumped together in a messy group behind its eldest member and apparent spokesman, a girl with pale violet skin, dimpled cheeks and hard grey eyes. She was twenty five, maybe, with a lankiness that suggested she was just entering her second major growth spurt, and a well-scrubbed look to her that was at odds with her mismatched clothing. A younger child of eight or so clung to her leg, her thumb in her mouth and a filthy plush Blasto toy trailing from her other hand. The other four were aged somewhere in between the two, a range of sizes, shapes and colours; all watched her with expectant looks.

"You're Lady Liara's other parent, right?" the spokeschild demanded.

"I'm Doctor T'Soni's dad, yeah," she corrected, having seen how her daughter tried not to wince every time someone called her 'Lady'. Aethyta couldn't blame her - she'd never liked the honorific herself. The day she was a lady was the day she hung up her shotgun for good. "What can I do for you kids? Shouldn't you be getting breakfast?"

The girl shrugged as if to say that breakfast was a very minor consideration in the grand scheme of things. She had a point.

"You can help us by teaching us how to fight, like you're teaching La- Doctor T'Soni."

"We saw you beat up that krogan the other week!" another kid chimed in. "Crack crack and then he went down!"

"It was just like a vid!" enthused a third. "And then you fought with Lady Benezia. She threw you into the wall and you just got right back up again!"

"And then-"

She had to fight down the urge to laugh as an excited chorus of assent went up from the little group, each member adding their own rather exaggerated takes on her battles of the previous weeks, including the sparring matches she'd had with Dora, Griete and a couple of the brighter Aralakh boys. She'd caught hell for each match, and for the fight, from the same sanctimonious assholes who wanted her to keep her ass in the camp. There hadn't been a lot they could do about it this time, though, other than bitch. Matriarchs were _supposed_ to teach. It wasn't her fault that she went in for practical lessons on the subject of ass-kicking.

The noise died from the group she held up a hand for quiet.

"Yeah, I could probably teach you a thing or two, if I wanted to," she conceded. It wasn't like she hadn't done it before, though two of the group in front of her were really a bit too young for even basic biotics instruction, let alone hand to hand combat. "The question, though, is: why should I? I thought that the matrons were giving you biotics lessons. That should be enough."

"Learning biotics and learning fighting are two different things," the eldest said firmly, crossing her arms. "And, anyways, they're not really teaching us anything anyway. It's all sitting and thinking and talking and never _doing_ anything. You _do_ stuff. And you teach people to do stuff. We've seen you."

"Well, you have to do some of the thinking to know how to do the doing," she countered, playing devil's advocate. Theory was nice and all, but only as a supplement to actual practice. Using biotics was all about control of the body - not something you could learn sitting on your ass in a classroom learning about the exact science behind the mass effect phenomenon.

"But not all the time! And it's all baby stuff anyway, what they're teaching. Nothing useful. Nothing I can use if the Reapers come back."

Ah. She'd _thought_ that might have been at the heart of the request.

"The Reapers aren't coming back, kiddo," she sighed, finding a seat on the steps. "They're as dead as dead can be."

Or so they all really fervently hoped.

"But what if they come back?" asked the youngest, eyes wide.

"They won't."

"But what if they do?" insisted another, slightly older girl.

"Then Commander Shepard and my daughter'll kill 'em again," she said, as if that should settle everything. She was not, however, particularly surprised when it didn't.

"But I heard one of the maidens saying that the Shepard human was dead too-"

"The Shepard human's not dead!" protested another, hotly. "She can't be! She's a hero. She killed the Reapers and she fixed the krogan and got the geth to let the quarians go home! Heroes don't die like normal people do."

"Heroes can die, kid, just like normal people do, but Shepard's not dead," Aethyta interrupted firmly to head off any further argument. "She's just hurt real bad."

Damned rumours. It was amazing how they spread, especially in a camp with such limited access to the outside world. That said, it'd be nice if Shepard finally stopped snoozing in her hospital bed and got back out into the galaxy - if only for Liara's sake. The kid didn't talk about her lover much, if at all, but the uncertainty about it all was clearly wearing on her.

"Oh."

"But the Reapers _aren't_ all dead," another one of them interjected. "You can still hear them at night, sometimes. Some of them got in here before you came."

"Those things out there aren't really Reapers anymore. The things that were controlling them are all gone. And they'll be dead soon too. That's what the krogan are here for. Nothing's better at killing than a krogan."

"Oh. "

"So you won't teach us, then?" the spokesgirl persisted.

"I didn't say that."

She looked over the group one more time. Orphans, the lot of them, she was pretty sure. Half of the kids in the camp were. The two affecting bravado she pegged as having sisters to protect, while two of the others simply seemed afraid, and were probably looking for something that would help them feel less so. The youngest of the group was too little to have any real idea of what was going on - she was probably a sister to one of the others in the group. The eldest, on the other hand, she of the hard eyes, straight back and demanding tone, was trying a little too hard to be a lot more grown up than she really was.

"You promised you'd look out for 'em, huh?" She took care to keep her tone gentle.

"My father was a salarian who died when I was little. My sister was a commando. She's dead now too. When the Reapers came, they turned my mom into one of their monsters. She killed our neighbours, and would have killed me too if I hadn't run away." The girl's voice, when narrating the events, was calm and distant, speaking as though they'd happened to someone else entirely, and a long time ago at that. When she was done, she laid her hand atop the littlest one's head and looked Aethyta straight in the eye. "This is my family now. I won't let anyone hurt them."

Aethyta sighed. She'd suspected it was something like that. But how did you begin to deal with it?

War. What a kick in the quad.

"Ok then. Here's the deal," she said, taking care to catch the eyes of each member of the group in turn. "You're not going to be beating up krogan any time soon, but I'll teach you all a thing or two. Biotics, a bit of brawling, whatever's useful. But, in return, you're gonna do exactly what I say, when I say it. I don't want to hear any arguing, any _But Aethyta_ s or _Aethyta, I don't wanna_ s. You do what I say, when I say it, or it ends, then and there. Deal?"

She held out her hand, palm up, and waited as the group held a hurried consultation.

"Deal," their spokesgirl said solemnly, resting her hand atop Aethyta's own.

"Good," Aethyta said with a smile, letting their hands drop. "Then you can start by getting me some breakfast. I like the number eight MRE, if we've still got any left. If not, I'll have whatever's going. You should get your own while you're there."

The group, as one asari, stared at her in mute incomprehension for a second, then drew in their collective breath for protest. She quirked a finger at them in warning.

"Ah! What did we just agree to?"

The group deflated as quickly as it had inflated. The spokesgirl's mouth snapped shut with an audible clop, and the look she gave Aethyta was practically pure affronted outraged. But she forced the upset back down with commendable speed, and, when she spoke again, her voice only contained a few traces of annoyance.

"A number eight MRE. Ok. Should we bring it here?"

"Nah. I think I'll be over near where I fought the krogan by the time you're done eating," Aethyta drawled. The space was smaller and a little more private than this bit of real estate, down by the waterfront, better for working with a group. "Come find me there."

The girl nodded and, without a further word, set off for the centre of the camp and the dining hall at a trot, her little group trailing after, some casting glances back at her over their shoulders. Once they were safely out of earshot, Aethyta allowed herself a wry chuckle. Three daughters, eight granddaughters and now this lot, and that trick had never gotten old. Ok, so maybe there wasn't a lot of glory to be had in besting children in an informal contract negotiation, but some days you just had to take your victories where you could find 'em. Today, she decided, sparing one last glance back towards the freighter as she set out, was probably one of them.


	18. Liara

"Well, that could have gone better."

"It might have gone worse as well," Samara replied mildly. "A small victory is a victory still."

"They do say that a good compromise leaves everyone at least a little bit unhappy," Palla added, though she didn't sound any more enthusiastic about it than Liara felt.

"Then this must have been a compromise to end all compromises," Liara said, allowing some of her frustration to enter her voice. "But perhaps you're right."

"Heh, maybe," Grunt rumbled. "But I still think you should have let me kick a few heads in. That'd get their attention. Would've been a hell of a lot more fun too."

"Please: do not tempt me."

Asari of all ages stopped and turned to stare as the group left the skybox and begin to make their way down through the arena, towards the exit and the dropship. Children watched, wide-eyed, clutching at toys or dolls or the legs of adults. Adolescents and maidens nudged one another and bent over to whisper in each other's ears. Matrons pointed the group out to their daughters, some hoisting them up onto shoulders for a better view. Cameras winked and omnitools flared. Some called out to them with questions, others with thanks. Some even cheered.

All told, the experience was a surreal one, and more than slightly uncomfortable.

Liara tried to convince herself, even as the crowd lining the lower terraces started to swell from the hundreds and into the thousands, that the interest they'd managed to attract stemmed entirely from the sheer novelty of the sight they presented - no more, no less. After all, mixed in with the four commandos and three more commonplace asari were a Justicar and five battle-scarred, heavily-armed krogan. She had to admit that they made a highly unusual, even impressive company. That had been the whole point, to 'flaunt her powerbase', such as it was. The one rather irritated Doctor Liara T'Soni, archaeologist, information broker and disfigured daughter of a disgraced politician could not _possibly_ be the one they were all pointing at, let alone cheering for. That was clearly some other Liara, the shouts of 'Normandy! Normandy!' aimed at Samara and Grunt. Never mind that their parts in the war had largely been played elsewhere.

Her moment of blessed self-delusion, however, lasted only until one heavily-pregnant matron dared to actually approach their group, seeking audience. When Liara indicated to her guards to let her through, the other asari grabbed Liara's good hand between her two own - tightly, so tightly, as if clinging for dear life - and tearfully thanked her for saving her bondmate, one of a group that Liara had apparently evacuated from some planet she couldn't even remember having read about. The couple, the matron said, were going to name their daughter after her.

Jacob Taylor's daughter was going to be named after Shepard, she remembered. Wrex, likewise, had bestowed the name upon his first-born, and Liara had heard similar rumblings back amongst alliance staff on and above Earth, and even in their camp in Armali. And now an asari Liara had never laid eyes upon before was going to name her firstborn daughter not after Shepard, but after _her_? Was that how it was going to be, going forward? A thousand new Shepards a year each year, until the memory finally faded? A hundred new Liaras? Would there be a Garrus in every dozen turian children? A score of Tali'Zorahs, Wrexes, Ashleys and Jameses? Perhaps even a Javik or two? What of the Edis and Jeffs and Karins and Samanthas?

She should be proud, she supposed, or even flattered that complete strangers thought well enough of her to give their child her name. There were far, far worse legacies to leave the galaxy after all. Wasn't that what Shepard had said, when remarking on the child of Jacob Taylor and Doctor Cole? But Shepard's humour about the whole naming issue back then had been bittersweet, laced with a sadness Liara hadn't understood until this very moment. Shepard's life, even her very _name_ belonged to other people more than it belonged to her, and there was no way to take it back.

She had never wanted to be a public figure.

At a near complete loss for what to say or do in response to the matron's announcement, Liara managed little more than a bemused 'I'm honoured' before Aurelia gently prised her hands free and ushered the other asari away. The words, at least, seemed to suffice, judging by the matron's teary smile, and Liara thought that she'd managed to keep the heartbeat of abject discomfort and indecision from showing on her face, but it was a near thing.

She was simply not cut out to be a politician. That was the long and short of it. She was not a people person, for one. Oh, it wasn't that she didn't _like_ people. Broadly speaking. And within moderation. It was just that she wasn't really very good at them.

And, for two, she no longer had the patience to simply sit and argue endlessly around in circles. Five hours of talking today and for what? A minor concession that she practically had to wrest out at knifepoint, a flat rejection of her other ideas and an invitation to be condescended to again in a few days' time. Little enough, as her mother would say. Little enough, when she- when _their people_ needed decisive action, and to reach out a hand to the rest of the galaxy to take and give whatever help could be found.

Liara had known, going into the meeting, that Vibianna was a staunch insularist - Benezia had said as much, confirming what Liara's own light dossier had to say about the matriarch. Unfortunately, the war had done little to change her fundamental outlook, and she had been strongly against the idea of turning to the other races for assistance. "The asari cannot afford to be seen as weak", she'd said, "especially now", and the others in the little 'council' had followed the lead of the eldest in their company.

It was idiocy, as far as Liara was concerned, pure and simple. Everyone with half a brain already knew what dire straits the Republics were in, or could guess. But try convincing Vibianna of that. It would seem that even a war to end wars could not cure their people's leaders of their wilful blindness to the realities of the _now_.

Liara's entourage - and there really was no avoiding the term now - folded back in around her, sealing her safely away from the growing mob, and they resumed their march for the exit. It was a move that did not help at all in the surrealism stakes. While Liara might been part of such groups, dozens, even hundreds of times before, many of them larger than this, she'd never been the focal point before. She'd always been a little detail in Benezia's retinue, a child holding her mother's hand and peering out at the world through a sea of legs, or a youth trailing a step or two behind her, surreptitiously trying to play a game or read a book on her omni-tool and occasionally crashing into people's backs through inattention. Indeed, any guards assigned to her from her mother's company were invariably known, with some amusement, as 'the Little Detail'.

She had never thought it particularly witty.

And now here she was, the big detail rather than the little one, in her mother's place, her mother's role, exactly where she'd more than once promised herself she'd never be. And it slowly dawned on Liara, too, that she was trying to do things, here, now, as her mother would have done them, once upon a time. The whole meeting idea had 'Benezia' written all over it.

"Liara! Liara! Nor-man-dy!" It was becoming a chant now, a thousand voices coming together as one, the noise of it vibrating up her legs and into her chest. "Nor-man-dy!"

She was not Benezia.

Perhaps, then, she was going about this in entirely the wrong way. She had come back to Thessia because the system was broken. Could she truly try to fix it whilst working within its confines? And even if she could, could she do it quickly enough?

What would Shepard do in her situation? Knowing her, she'd probably employ that oh-so very human idiom of seeking forgiveness and not permission. As philosophies went, it was pretty much the antithesis to traditional asari customs. It had also proved, Liara had to admit, hugely effective on more than one occasion. Weren't the areas surrounding Armali now relatively clear of Reaper forces because she'd had the nerve to invite a full company of krogan to Thessia? In violation of a centuries-old treaty?

She had the contacts already - better contacts than anyone else could currently claim. Why couldn't she just _do_ , and force the issue?

"Liara! Liara, please!"

A trio of maidens leaned dangerously over the railing of the tier they were descending past, one frantically waving a datapad and stylus. An autograph. She could do that and did, awkward and crabbed, while Palla held the pad for her, and flashed a smile.

And, perhaps, if she was going about creating change in the wrong way, perhaps she was looking in for support in all the wrong places too. It had always been, in asari society, that change was driven from the top down. The matriarchs were the ones who had the time and the inclination to consider new ideas, debate new policies, research history, analyse precedent and conduct detailed studies into the implications of the most subtle changes to law. While matrons and maidens of at least a hundred years could and occasionally did put forward new proposals, the wise ones ensured that they had the backing of at least one matriarch before they did so. To do otherwise to was openly court failure, for all support would melt away if just one, single matriarch said 'no' and went unopposed by any of her sisters. Asari were taught from the breast to trust and rely upon the wisdom and judgement of their elders, and it was so ingrained deeply within their collective psyche that to do otherwise was almost unthinkable.

But the matriarchs had been the ones who'd led them astray. The ones who'd sat and dithered while the other worlds burned until it was too late to save their own. Who'd lied and lied and _lied_ to them about their history and the basis for their accomplishments for untold generations, and kept lying until it was almost too late.

The noise grew exponentially as they reached the lowest tier, until it had a physical presence it felt like they all had to fight against with every step. The crowd began to press around them in earnest, too, and her guards began to push back.

"This is too much!" Aurelia shouted as one of the krogan - Murn, she thought - gave another group of autograph seekers a particularly hard shove as the crowd surged forward. Push for the exit!"

Her voice was all but lost in the din, but the flare of her biotic barrier was not, and the formation shifted around Liara, and someone put a hand on her head, forcing it down, and the other in the small of her back, directing her steps.

She probably should have been afraid.

Vibianna was more than eight hundred years her senior, and had really only agreed to see her to see if she could use her. If she could _control_ her. If the meeting was any indication as to how the other surviving matriarchs would react – and it seemed consistent with the way Cyone was ignoring her – she didn't and may well _never_ have their support save, perhaps, for the ones already outside of or marginalised by the establishment. Those like her father.

But then she didn't necessarily _need_ their support, did she? She was Liara T'Soni, war veteran, Normandy crew member, architect of the Crucible, evacuation coordinator, relief organiser and the improbable hero of a hundred vids. If Garrus Vakarian was Palaven's favourite son, then she was certainly Thessia's favourite daughter. She had the goodwill of the masses – the crowds today a testament to that fact, dangerous over-enthusiasm aside. And, while the matriarchs had always been the ones who'd made the proposals, equally, it had always been the matrons and maidens who'd had to be won over to carry the vote. The same matrons and maidens that were shouting her name.

The question was: how could she harness that goodwill and turn it into something tangible? And do it without alienating _everyone_ holding power?

The question stayed with her as they finally passed through the barricade, then under the archway and into the passage beneath the arena, and she was allowed to stand upright again. The shouts and cheers of the crowd echoed off the brightly coloured mosaics of the corridor until they were swallowed up by the sheer weight of concrete and steel, and then left behind entirely as they passed through another barricade and stepped clear, onto the grand, swooping walkway leading down to the central park. It was there that she directed they pause for a few seconds, to catch their breath, taken in the view.

Cianna had been one of the smallest of the city-states before the war, really only notable for its successful skyball team, and had apparently been a lower priority target for the Reapers' bombardment as a result. It was easy to forget what green looked like, living in Armali, easy to forget the sight of any colours, really, other than grey and brown and blue, but there were still parks here, trees and flowers and birds and other living things, tents and shelters arranged in neat, colourful rows. Perhaps none of the great skyscrapers still stood, but many of the smaller buildings had survived. They had power, intermittently, and water enough for the almost one million calling the city home. Even the arena, a designated emergency shelter for forty thousand and now crammed full with over fifty, had come through almost intact.

That wasn't to say that there weren't problems. Liara knew that the million asari in residence in the city were almost entirely dependent upon aid from the surviving colony worlds, a situation that had led to strict rationing, and with that had to come: looting, theft, extortion and black market. Sanitation, like in their own camp, remained another issue they could see and smell, even here, and Vibianna admitted that they'd started to see the emergence and spread of disease.

And yet Vibianna and the rest refused to seek help from outside of the Republics. She'd even seemed reluctant to barter what they had left to offer the greater community within it. Perhaps they had little in the way of physical resources, but they had _people_ who could be put to work if they could be moved off the planet. But no, Vibianna's city – her _position_ – came first.

Liara shook her in resigned frustration, and gestured for their little company to move out again. They made their way briskly down the walkway and through the park and the rows of its camp. The press of people was considerably lighter, most residents only catching a glimpse of them as they strode past, but they still attracted stares and shouts. And there, having a heated argument with the two krogan left behind to guard the shuttle-

Reporters.

Liara sighed as the trio turned and spotted them, and sent their cameras whirring over. The sigh turned into a barely-suppressed groan when she spied the trendy white spiralling tattoos over bright blue markings that could only mean Cearra Ce'Molla, perhaps the closest thing she'd ever encountered to an asari Khalisah al-Jilani. The other two were not people she recognised, but their cameras bore prominent and well-known logos, so it was unlikely that they've give her much of a better time.

Aurelia glanced back towards her for guidance, and, for a moment, Liara considered having her entourage bull straight past the tiny press corps and into the shuttle without so much as a word.

She hated dealing with the media even more than Shepard did (an achievement in and of itself), and her infrequent appearances before Emily Wong's cameras aboard the Normandy had been the patient result of Wong and Shepard's combined pleading, coaxing, coaching, arguing, and, on one notable occasion, flagrant bribery. They'd all had to do their turn, the Normandy crew, even Javik, once his very existence had been declassified.

The extensive outtakes from that particular interview had kept the entire crew amused for over a week. Even now, all one had to do was mention the word 'airlock' with the right inflection to provoke Liara to an inappropriate fit of giggles. Shepard had laughed, face-down in a pillow, until she'd cried. And then cried and cried into Liara's shoulder because there hadn't really been anything funny about it at all, when you got right down to it, just a man out of time and out of place with nothing left to live for but death.

Ce'Molla, however, was no affable Emily Wong, and this most certainly was not the controlled environment of the Normandy, with Shepard standing by to soothe her nerves away. There would be no ability to vet the footage before its release, to control the context of how what she said was presented. There was no one in her company that she could put before the cameras but herself. She was on her own. Utterly.

But there _was_ an opportunity here, if only she could seize it. What Shepard had said, when talking about why she'd allowed Wong on board her ship in the first place, was that the press was like a fire: you could either tame it and make it work for you, or you could ignore it and risk it burning your house down - and you with it. Her mother had said something similar once, also noting that matriarchs since the dawn of time had bemoaned the intrusiveness and obtuseness of the press in one breath and, in the very next, complained that nobody really cared to listen to what was being said in the first place.

Liara shook her head, ever so slightly; Aurelia shrugged and rolled her eyes, but gestured for the column to slow, then halt. The moment the group came within range, the trio of reporters began to call out, all talking at once, jostling to be heard and seen first.

"Cearra Ce'Molla, Republics Galactic Journal! Doctor, can I have a minute of your time?"

"Doctor T'Soni! Tekla Maris, Citadel News Network. Can you answer some questions for us?"

"Lasira T'Brola from the Parnitha Tribune! Doctor T'Soni, a few questions, if I may-"

It is never wise to allow a reporter to dictate the terms of discourse, her mother had remarked once. Benezia had a knack for gracefully deflecting ambushes such as this and, as a general rule, required reporters to make an appointment to see her in any case. An appointment was obviously not particularly workable in the current situation, but the underlying idea was a sound one.

She drew herself up, fixed an amiable expression on her face and stepped forward, out from her entourage. She had to turn slightly to the side to keep them all in her field of vision, and did not miss the looks of surprise that flickered across their faces at the sight of her injuries, or Tekla's sudden, sharp inhalation of breath. That was good, in a way, she told herself. They were slightly off balance.

"I would be happy to answer a few questions," she said as pleasantly as she could manage, "in, say, five minutes? I would like to get my people settled first."

Ce'Molla, unsurprisingly, was the first to recover and protest.

"Doctor T'Soni-" she began, but Liara quickly and firmly cut her off.

"Five minutes. Thank you."

Her little entourage folded back in around her as if they'd rehearsed the manoeuvre a hundred times before, and she was quickly whisked into the relative safety of the dropship. There was a general relaxing of muscles and lowering of weapons as the hatch swung down and shut, sealing them safely away. Liara let out a breath she hadn't even known she was holding, aware that her mouth had gone dry and she had the strange, slightly light-headed feeling of an unneeded adrenaline surge. She braced her hands on the interior wall to steady herself and took deep, calming breath.

"Deftly done," Samara said, moving to stand beside her.

Liara shook her head without looking up.

"It could have been better. I am quite certain that they can spin that, and Kerst and Sharrn arguing with them, in any way that they please. And they will have more time to prepare for me now."

A hand touched her right arm. She turned and looked up into Aurelia's concerned eyes.

"We could just go now, if you want to," the commando suggested. "There's no way they could stop us."

"It would look very bad if I did. But, honestly, it is a tempting notion. I'd rather face a thresher maw than stand in front of a camera."

"Hah! You and me both," Grunt boomed in. "Reporters are hard. They don't shut up and you're not allowed to eat 'em. Thresher maws, though - dead easy. Did Shepard ever tell you about the time we killed one on foot?"

"Yes." She dropped her hands and turned to face him, fixing a smile on her face. "Though she said that it was primarily you that did the killing. All she did, she said, was hand you ammunition."

The young krogan broke into a face-splitting grin. Grunt was a strange one, of that there was no doubt. One moment, he was all krogan, an efficient, disciplined, relentless killer who delighted in battle and the shedding of blood. The next - and particularly any time he started talking about Shepard or their mutually shared hobby of model-building - he was all wide-eyed, bouncing enthusiasm. It was actually kind of... cute. And more than slightly disturbing.

"My Battlemaster's always been too modest. I couldn't have done it without her."

Samara gave a discreet little cough.

"I believe that Garrus was part of your krannt for your Rite as well, young Grunt," she said mildly. "He deserves some credit too."

Grunt waved an armoured hand almost apologetically.

"Well, I guess he didn't do too badly either. For a turian."

"Wait, you killed a thresher maw with Commander Shepard _and_ the new _turian Primarch_?" Griete asked incredulously.

"Yeah, but that was just a little thing," Grunt said dismissively. "The _real_ story's the Collector Base. Now that was a fight!"

"The most exhilarating and demanding day of my life," Samara agreed with a smile. "There was many a time when I thought we might perish, but the Commander somehow found a way to get us through."

Liara closed her eye and tuned them out as they began to recount the tale of the daring and decidedly suicidal raid. She'd heard the story before, of course, but was one whose retelling had never brought her pleasure. She hadn't been there for Shepard on that mission. She'd been too caught up in her pursuit of the Shadow Broker.

She pushed that thought from her mind too, and focused instead on the impending interview, trying to remember all of the advice she'd been given, by Shepard, by Wong, by her mother. _Have a simple, clear message, and stick to it_. She had an idea for the message now, she thought, but conveying it clearly would be the real test. _Keep your answers short, don't say any more than you have to, don't speculate_. That one was always problematic - she tended to ramble when she got nervous, and often arrived at a topic completely different to the one she had started on. _Expect the questions you really don't want them to ask, or didn't think they even knew to ask about, and have answers prepared_. Her mother's survival. Her status as the Shadow Broker. Her relationship with Shepard. Shepard's condition. How she was horrendously out of her depth and wished that she could stop time or turn it back somehow or simply just vanish into the night.

She took in and let out another deep breath, and opened her eye. Well, she was as ready as she'd ever be.

"I'm sorry to interrupt," she said, nodding to the storytellers and their rapt audience of krogan and asari alike, "but it's time. Samara, Auerlia, Griete; with me please."

The reporters had gained a sizeable audience by the time they re-emerged, and one of the two she wasn't familiar with - Tekla, she thought - was busy grabbing sound bites from them. She stopped almost immediately, though, when Liara appeared, and re-joined her colleagues. There was another moment of jostling between the three for the best camera angles, and a third as they belatedly realised that they were all going to have to stand slightly to Liara's left if they wanted her to see them. Once they were settled, however, the introductions had been repeated and the basic pleasantries exchanged, the impromptu press conference kicked off.

The first few questions from all three of them were easy enough to field and answer straight from the heart. She talked about discovering the plans for the Crucible, and how grateful she was that the galactic community had pulled together to build it in time – with a personal thanks to all of the asari who had lent their long-cultured skills to the project. She caught herself rambling a bit when they came to talking about the extinction cycles her earlier research had revealed, and also caught herself secretly (and rather uncharitably) hoping that some of her old professors would see the broadcast. The questions got harder to answer when the topic turned to the closing days of the war, not least because she found her throat closing up on some of the answers, but it was when they got into her more recent activities that she had to take a second or two to think carefully about each answer before she gave it.

"Were you aware that the presence of a full company of krogan on Thessia is a direct violation of the Treaty of Lusia?" Ce'Molla asked pointedly.

"I am aware of the Treaty, yes."

"And yet you invited this 'Aralakh Company' to Armali and allowed them to engage in military exercises upon Thessian soil?"

"The krogan are our allies," Liara replied, slightly surprised by how reasonable she managed to keep her voice, "and it would not have been possible to win the war without them. Aralakh Company is a proud and noble unit who represent the very best that the krogan military has to offer. They came to Armali at my express invitation to help our own forces with the ground cleanup. We owe them our thanks, not our suspicion."

"But doesn't the galaxy have the right to be suspicious?" Lasira interrupted. "With the genophage cured, don't we all run the risk of a new Krogan Rebellion?"

"I don't think that anyone wants to see a repeat of the Krogan Rebellions - least of all the krogan."

"The krogan have never been a people remarked upon for their foresight but are well known for their brutality and love of conflict. How can we possibly trust-"

The smooth, reasonable tone of Tekla's voice belied the overt racism of her question, and Liara was sure that if she still had her other eye, it would have started twitching. She had seen the ancient city of the maw, had been permitted to sit at the Urdnot Bakara and listen to her sing a fragment of the memory chant of the Clan Urdnot. Both were great works, made to last ages.

"I understand that clan leaders and shamans are meeting even now on Tuchanka to determine the best way forward for their people," she cut in forcefully. "Obviously I cannot speculate as to what the exact outcome of the discussion will be, but Warlord Urdnot Wrex has said, publicly, that it if the krogan don't take this chance to learn from the mistakes of their ancestors, then they cannot be surprised if the galaxy decides to teach them another, more permanent lesson. And Urdnot Bakara, who speaks for the female clans, has said that any krogan who now seeks retribution for the outcome of the Rebellions will be denied breeding rights indefinitely."

"Is that what your meeting with Matriarch Vibianna today was about?" Ce'Molla asked. When Liara didn't answer immediately, she pressed: "I understand that the Matriarch has been very displeased by your actions, not just in breaking the Treaty."

"Cearra," Liara said evenly, "I'm afraid the truth is that I've been very displeased by hers."

A pause from the assembled press and spectators met her reply, and Liara felt her heart start to race again. Maidens, even famous maidens, simply did not criticise prominent Matriarchs in public. But this was it, her one, golden opportunity to state her case, if only she could frame it properly. She needed to draw a distinction between the government and the people somehow. It wouldn't do - nor would it be accurate - to suggest that everyone was as culpable.

"Doctor T'Soni, are you saying that _you disapprove_ of Matriarch Vibianna's handling of the recovery effort?" Cearra's expression of disbelief was almost theatrical.

"I am." She looked away from Cearra's incredulous face and directly into the hovering cameras. "You know that I advocated strongly and publicly for greater asari involvement in the war effort from the very outset. But I was only one voice among many, and a maiden at that, and, as asari, we are taught from a very young age to place our trust in the wisdom and guidance of our matriarchs. When they speak, we listen. When they tell us to act, we act. When they advise us to stay our hand, we wait. And when they are wrong, we suffer."

She glanced quickly around at the reporters, the crowd, seeing interest, confusion and suspicion there, but nothing to preclude her continuing.

"Our leaders were wrong," she said, "and now we are suffering. Not only were they wrong, but the broader matriarchy was _wilfully blind_ to the realities of the situation until it was almost too late. As a people, we have a well-earned reputation as the diplomats and peacemakers of the galaxy, and yet, when the Reapers came, our first order of business was to look to our own and stay removed from the alliance Commander Shepard worked so hard to build. This, to me, represents no less than a catastrophic failure of judgement and leadership.

"And if that was not bad enough, I see this repeated again even now in the likes of those such as Matriarch Vibianna, who is far more interested in maintaining the illusion of control _in one city_ than helping the Republics and the greater galaxy rebuild, someone who is still wilfully blind to the realities of what must be done _now_. It is utterly inexcusable. I would go so far as to call on her and those of her ilk to _stand down_."

She took a deep breath and tried to calm her racing heart, thaw some of the ice of anger from her voice.

"But while our government may have failed to act appropriately during the war, our people did not. An asari discovered the Crucible and thousands of asari engineers and scientists worked on it from its very earliest days. Asari colonies housed, fed and clothed uncounted numbers of refugees of all species. Asari corporations and manufacturing worlds built and supplied ships and munitions and other supplies vital to the war effort. Asari commandos fought and died in the thousands to save civilians from other races on worlds light-years away from their own homes and families, not because they were told to by our government, but because they and their communities thought that it was _right_.

" _That_ is the spirit that we need now, as we rebuild. And so, to my sister asari, I say: let our actions be our words once more. The need is urgent, and there will time enough for debate and analysis later. To the rest of the galaxy, I say: help us, and let us help you. We must all work together, now, to win the peace, even as we came together to win the war."

Liara became aware, as she stopped speaking, that almost the entire assemblage - reporters, swelling audience and two of her three-person guard - were staring at her as if she'd grown an extra head. The only one amongst them who appeared unmoved was Samara, who watched her with an impassive face and eyes like ice.

"Thank you," she concluded with a nod towards the cameras, "and that will be all for today,"

Too late, the reporters and then the audience recovered themselves, shouting questions, and then actually trying to follow her back onto the ship as she retreated. Aurelia and Griete held them back for a time, but it wasn't until Samara put up a biotic barrier that they themselves were able to make good their own escape.

"I see now why you wanted my Oath," Samara murmured as the hatch cycled shut behind them, and unreadable coolness of the Justicar's eyes made Liara very glad that she had it. "You walk a dangerous path, young one. We Justicars are forbidden from taking part in the political sphere, but that does not mean that I do not take an interest."

"Mother says that every action is political, especially the one to abstain from politics," Liara said distantly.

The post-adrenaline backwash was even worse this time. Now that she was safe she was starting to feel light-headed and decidedly shaky on her feet.

"A fair point," Samara conceded with a gracious nod of her head. "But I take an interest because I am sworn to uphold our laws and norms. What you said today would be sedition, viewed in one light."

"I know," Liara interrupted wearily. "But these are unusual times, Justicar, and our laws have always been what we made them. Today's sedition may be tomorrow's truth."

She spared a glance towards Aurelia and Greite, who regarded her with a mixture of concern and something she thought might be admiration, and then found the rest of her entourage, krogan and asari, still listening with rapt attention to Grunt as he wove his tales of adventure and glory and, she suspected, gore and overlarge explosions.

"And now, if you will excuse me, I need a moment to myself."

She didn't gibber, in the end, as she feared she might when she locked herself in the ship's head, but she did have to sit down and hug herself until the trembling had subsided and the tears had dried. Goddess! She could not have just essentially - and very publicly - declared war on the matriarchy, on her own government! Sedition, Samara had called it, and she wouldn't be wrong. Doing that would be insane. She was an archaeologist, for Athame's sake, not… whatever this was. She belonged out in the field, doing research, or perhaps in the backrooms of a quiet museum somewhere, cataloguing and cleaning and writing. She should really be anywhere but here, doing anything but _this_. She should be, most of all, with Shepard, making good on their mantra.

She managed to pull herself back together before they reached Armali, and none of the company made any mention of her absence for the flight home in any case. She thanked them all and dismissed them for dinner, then made her own way back through the pink and gold light of dusk to her unofficial office in the cargo hold of her freighter. It was with a heavy sigh that she dropped into her chair and powered up her terminals. It would be another late night tonight - of that she was certain. She had a very strong feeling that she would need to have the decks cleared as much as possible before, as Shepard would have said, the shit hit the fan tomorrow.

She was mid-way through one of her agent's reports on suspected Cerberus activity in Artemis Tau when the Broker interface flicked over to her 'public' one, a few seconds before she heard approaching footsteps and a voice:

"I've brought you some dinner, my Lady."

Liara sighed, but there was a smile behind it as she looked up at the intruder, swinging her monitors aside.

"Please, Aurelia," she chided, "if you can't call me 'Doctor', then call me 'Liara'. At least in private."

"Yes, my La- I mean Doc- I mean, Liara."

The younger asari ducked her head slightly, abashed, and Liara wondered how someone who was so confident on the battlefield and amongst her comrades could be so ill at ease in her presence. Liara didn't think that she was particularly threatening except when she wanted to be.

"But, here: dinner," the commando continued. "You should eat something. You need to keep your strength up."

"You don't have to do this sort of thing, you know," she said, accepting the pack and checking the label. A number fifteen, which meant spiced _kletik_ soup and unleavened bread, both meant to be eaten cold. Not what she would have chosen, given the option, but oh well. "I am quite capable of fetching my own meals."

"You seem to forget an awful lot. And, anyway, I'm your guard," Aurelia said, and there was an odd note of defiance in her voice. "It's my job to look out for you."

"And you do it very well too," Liara assured her with another smile. "Have you eaten?"

The commando nodded.

"I did, with the others in the dining hall, my La- I mean Doc- I mean" Aurelia's expression became pained, and she briefly covered her eyes with her hand. "Oh, Goddess! I'm just going to go right now."

"Okay..?"

"But, um, can we talk about your security arrangements tomorrow though, please? People now that you're here now, and after your, uh, speech I think we can probably expect more visitors, and some of them might not be friendly."

"I suppose," Liara conceded, not quite able to keep the frown from her face. She looked down at the ration pack again, and then back up at her guard. "Do you think I did the right thing, today?"

"It's not my place-"

"You have every right to have an opinion, Aurelia. Even if it is different to my own. What do you think?"

The young commando wet her lips in apparent nervousness.

"Well... honestly… I think that we could have done more during the war. The Republics, I mean. Matriarch Lidanya taught that it's sometimes necessary to throw the full weight of your body behind the point of your spear rather than hold back and feint at arm's length. Maybe things would have gone better if we'd committed our forces while they were still intact instead of waiting until they'd been damaged and scattered. And I think a lot of us in service were frustrated that we weren't doing more to help out. And I heard what the matriarchs were saying to you today in the meeting, about how we'd look bad if we don't do this on our own, which, really, is a complete load of varrenshit. People are _dying_ still, and they don't want to look bad. Maybe that's the longer view, and maybe seeming weak now will come back to bite us on the ass in a few hundred years' time, but I doubt it. So, um, yes." Aurelia tugged at the high collar of her leathers. "I guess, I think you're right."

"Well, there's one person who believes in me, I guess," Liara replied, feeling oddly relieved. It was one thing to believe it, she supposed, and quite another to have someone agree with you. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Aurelia said, and smiled. She had quite a pretty smile, Liara noted, in a girlish kind of way, with dimples on her cheeks. "But, um, anyway, I'd better get going. We'll talk security tomorrow, yes?"

"Tomorrow," Liara agreed. "Sleep soundly, Aurelia."

"You too... Liara."

Liara watched her go, and then returned her attention to her monitors with a bemused smile and a slight shake of her head. Her smile, though, fell as soon she opened the first of the priority flagged messages that had come in through her non-Broker inboxes. She read it once, twice, three times, and then ran a trace on the sender, just to be sure. She couldn't be wrong - not about this. When that was done, she sat and stared at the screen for several minutes, considering her options, before loading the message onto handy datapad, closing her terminals and setting out into the cool dark of the night.

Unpleasant news, in her experience, was best dealt with sooner rather than later. And this, unfortunately, was exceedingly unpleasant.


	19. Aethyta

Aethyta swam gradually back up towards full consciousness, taking careful stock of herself as she went.

She was still more than half drunk. That was probably a check in the plus column, all things considered. Unfortunately, she was more than a little bit hung-over too, which was a definite negative, and definitely only going to get more negative as time went by.

All arms and legs and other extremities seemed to be attached, and she was in a bed of some sort, both of which were definitely plusses, especially when you considered some of the other places you could end up after a night on the town. Beneath the blanket, however, she seemed to be butt naked, and that was one that could really go either way. It rather depended on who the shoulder her head was half-pillowed against belonged to, whose legs one of hers had worked itself over and between and who owned the soft, full but regrettably clothed breast beneath her resting hand.

Her hand twitched. Her nostrils flared.

A familiar softness. A familiar scent.

Oh.

Well, that one could go either way too.

For now, though, it wasn't worth worrying about. Better to stay here, half-drunk, half-asleep, and pretend that everything was just as it used to be. That she was safe, and content, and loved. Far better.

She sighed and shifted closer, closing what little space remained between them to nuzzle at the delicate arch of her bondmate's neck. A questioning noise met the movement, a cheek was pressed to the top of her head and fingers, in the lightest, gentlest of touches, brushed down her cheek, along the line of her jaw. She sighed again, relaxed a bit further still, and let her mind drift down towards nothingness.

When she woke again, some unknown time later, she was somewhat less drunk, considerably more hung-over and, to cap it all off, in dire need of a piss. She tried to push the sensations away, to hold tight to blissful, sleepy ignorance, and cursed softly when her efforts failed. Extricating herself as carefully as she could manage, she half-rolled, half-stumbled out of the bed, found her pants and, rebounding off the occasional wall and doorframe with the not-so occasional curse, and made use of the ship's limited facilities. Damned if she was heading all the way down to the latrines. She was a thousand years old, thank you very much. She could damn well have her comforts if she wanted them, and 'appearances' could go take a flying leap.

Necessary business attended to, she cleaned her hands with a quick-dry alcohol scrub, and, slightly more steadily and certainly more quietly, began the return trip, shivering a little from the cold. She hadn't gotten very far, however, when a little tableau in the galley caught her eye: two bottles, an MRE, a small green sachet and three orange pills. She examined them each in turn through bleary eyes, mouth suddenly dry with thirst. The first bottle was glass, the amber liquid inside, when she pulled the stopper for a cautious sniff and quick swing, a rather low-end ice brandy. Not quite shuttle fuel, but close. The second, larger and more prominently placed plastic bottle turned out to be just plain water, the sachet beside it an electrolyte mix and the pills an analgesic, probably from some field battle kit or another. She shrugged, popped the pills, added the sachet to the water and took a long pull from it before setting it aside. The MRE was the one she found least objectionable after the goddess only knew how many days of living on the damn things - a creamy _tasnitsi_ fish stew. A number eight.

It was a thoughtful gesture, even if her stomach threatened to rebel at the very idea of food. The whole evening had been thoughtful, come to think of it, much more than she'd expected Benezia to be capable of these days. Hell, she'd seemed to know exactly what Aethyta would need before she needed it and had it to hand, from the moment she'd first appeared in the dining hall, looking for her, to the way she'd drawn her aside, to the drink she'd pressed into her hand just before she delivered the letter, to-

Aethyta felt her heart lurch again, hard in her chest, and tears, sudden and hot, blurred her vision. She gripped the edge of the counter with both hands, bowed her head and squeezed her eyes shut, willing them away.

_You'd have been so proud of her, ma_ Mel had written.

Fuck pride. Fuck it right in its bony arse. She'd rather have a living daughter. Hadn't she told them all that? If they ever got to feeling an urge for a glorious death in battle, she'd said, they had to come and see her first. She'd set them straight or die trying herself. Glory was only fun if you were still around to enjoy its perks.

"Fuck."

Suddenly unable to stand still a moment longer, she pushed herself back from the counter, turned away, turned back, repeated the motion twice more, snatched up the brandy bottle, yanked the top off in a single, practiced motion, threw it aside and skulled half of the thing in one go.

_It was a hell of a thing to see. She tore through them like a thresher maw in a siarist commune._

"Fuck!"

Her voice was hoarse from the cold burn of the brandy, her eyes welling over with tears that could only possibly be from the same. She took a moment to get her breath back, tipped back the bottle once more and finished the rest in another long draught. When she was done, she stood, swaying, staring down at the empty bottle through stinging eyes.

_None of us would have gotten out if she hadn't stayed back to hold them off. You'd have been so proud of her. Goddess knows I was._

"Fuck!" it was a shout this time, and she punctuated it by flinging the bottle against the galley's stainless steel wall.

It shattered in a deeply satisfying fashion, showering her and the galley with stinging shards of frozen light. She stared down at them, glittering in the sink and on the counter, and was suddenly, almost absurdly reminded of the time they'd gone back to Kahje, just after Drakan, Zara's father, had died.

They'd picked up the boat she'd left stored in the great floating port of Bimett, all those years before, and she'd taken Mel and Zara out onto the great Encompassing for a few months. Ostensibly, it was to teach them to sail, but in reality it was more so that the three of them could sit and talk and grieve and just be together without other distractions. Most nights they'd slept out on the deck beneath the open, glittering sky, and she'd taught them the names of the stars and the constellations, just as Gazes With Wonder at the Fire-lit Void, Mel's other parent, had once taught her. You didn't get stars anywhere else like you did on Kahje. It was something about the lack of light pollution, and the reflection from the endless, bottomless water.

Aethyta might have been a spacer brat by birth and inclination, and Thessia may have been the birthplace of her people, but Kahje would always be the home of her soul, tattered and weary as it was. It was the place where, for the first time after the death of her parents, she'd found something approaching peace, a peace she hadn't even known she'd needed. She'd taught her girls to love the ocean world too, with time. Zara, still a child, then, had cried to leave it. Later, she'd taken her own two daughters out on similar voyages when her bondmates - their fathers - had died.

Would those two go out there now together, in her memory? Should Aethyta take them out herself? Were they both even still alive? Hells, was there even anything still left of the hanar homeworld to visit? They weren't exactly what you'd call a militant species; taking out their automated defences would be a maiden's game.

The ache in her chest only grew at the thought of ash on the water, explosions in the deep.

"Aethyta? Are you alright?"

Her head whipped around, seeking out the intruder, and quickly found her, rubbing the sleep from her eye: Liara. Benezia's kid. Her own youngest. The one who'd been kept from her. The one she'd mourned for twice already, drinking to the relationship they'd never had, never would have. Four daughters, Aethyta'd had, when the war started. Now she only had three, and one of those wasn't really hers at all.

"Fine, kid," she said wearily. "Go back to bed."

The kid took a hesitant step closer.

"Are you sure-?"

"I said I'm fine. Bed. Now. Go."

"Um. 'Dad', I just wanted to say-"

Something about the awkward way in which the kid said the unaccustomed word made Aethyta's blood run hot. She'd never been Liara's father. But she had wanted to be. She'd realised too late, maybe, how badly, but she'd wanted to be. She'd wanted to share her life and her loves one last time before she was too old, too tired or too dead.

"Get. Lost," she growled, turning in full. "And If I have to repeat myself one more time, you're _really_ gonna regret it."

Still, though, Liara lingered, and Aethyta charged a fist, a show of making good on her threat, when a new voice chimed in from behind her.

"Liara, go," Benezia said quietly. "I will handle this."

The kid cast one last lingering, worried look between the pair of them, nodded her acquiescence and then fled, looking relieved. When Aethyta was certain that she was well out of earshot, she turned back to face Benezia, fist still raised and charged.

"And you can fuck right off too! You're good at that. I should know!"

Benezia ignored the implied threat and the accusation, and instead took a careful step closer, frowning as she surveyed the shards of glass littering the small space. In the flickering light of Aethyta's biotics, she looked gaunt and drawn and hollow, shadows dancing across her face to pool in the well of her eyes and the hollows of cheeks. The line of her collarbone stood out in stark relief against her skin where it was visible there, beneath the loose, long shirt that covered her to mid-thigh.

"The whole bottle, Aethyta? Really?"

Aethyta followed her gaze down to the floor and back up again, meeting her eyes. What she saw there, the hint of disapproval behind the concern, only fuelled her rising anger.

"Yeah, 'the whole fucking bottle'. So what? You left it there!"

"I did not-"

"And even if you didn't, you are in _no_ position to judge me, Benezia T'Soni," she declared, letting her charged fist dissipate to point an accusing finger at her former lover instead. "No fucking position at all! Hiding away in your cabin and in your bed and in your own damn head while the rest of us try to get on with things! You're not the only one who's been hurt by this fucking war!"

There was a pause that went on for rather too long, the only sounds Aethyta's short, quick breaths and the hot rush of her own blood in her veins.

"No. I rather suppose that I am not. I had not meant-" Benezia stopped abruptly and sighed, closing her eyes and bowing her head. "Very well. I will trouble you no longer."

Goddess, always fucking _retreating_! But that was Benezia all over. She'd deflect and deflect and _deflect_ , never willing to have an honest, stand-up row, never wanting to give Aethyta the satisfaction of seeing her lose her own temper.

Her hands balled themselves back into fists.

"Oh, and that's how you 'handle things', is it?" she sneered. "By walking away?"

She took a step towards her former bondmate and right onto a shard of glass; the sharp stab of pain through her bare foot only drove her anger to new heights, pushing it dangerously close to rage. She felt her biotics flare all along her body, and could see the red creeping in at the edges of her vision.

"But I guess it's worked out pretty well for you so far! When things get rough, you just up sticks and fuck off and screw the rest of us right over, don't you? Don't you?! Well, fuck you too!"

When Benezia didn't respond, didn't even lift her head, Aethyta closed the final distance between them with two quick steps, seizing her upper arm with one hand and her chin with the other, forcing her head up so that their eyes met. Benezia did not resist, even when Aethyta forced her back up against the wall beside the cabin's door.

"Well, come on then! You always had the glib tongue outta the two of us. What have you gotta say for yourself, hiding away in here? What makes you so special? So damn precious? I want to hear it! Come on!"

When this too, failed to elicit a response, Aethyta shook her roughly, increasing the pressure of her grip from hard to bruising.

"Come on, Benezia! You're not fucking running from me this time!" She shook her again. "Say something, damnit!"

Still nothing. Aethyta raised the hand holding her chin and pulled it back to deliver, not a biotically charged blow, but an open-handed slap, when she remembered herself and froze.

Family was important, her father had said. Sacrosanct.

He'd killed her mother though, even as she'd killed him. For all his words and hers, family hadn't really mattered squat to them in the end. They'd gone off to that miserable dump of a station so they could kill each other, leaving her alone with nothing but their debts, a cheap shotgun and a few pieces of worthless sentimental crap, all because family – because _she_ wasn't anywhere near as important to them as their fucking honour had been.

She wasn't her father, though. Or her mother. And only animals and cowards attacked those who couldn't fight back. Benezia couldn't, not now. Still as she'd gone, Aethyta could feel the way her ex was trembling beneath her hands, see the whites of her eyes and the fine sheen of perspiration along her brow.

And she was damned if she'd be her mother.

" _Shit_."

She let her upraised hand fall.

"Shit."

And then, because it seemed like a good idea, she brought it back up again to caress one pale cheek with the backs of her fingers.

"Hey," she said, quietly, awkwardly, abruptly aware of the racing of her heart and the pounding of her head, the slight slur and uneven rhythm her speech had acquired. "Hey babe. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I know it's hard. I know. I shouldn't, shouldn't have- Aw, hell."

And then, because she'd never had Benezia's way with words, and because it seemed like a good idea too, she leaned forward and kissed her.

It wasn't, in the long, storied history of their kisses, a particularly good one. It wasn't even close. A sudden tenseness of body and sharp inhalation of breath was the only indication that Benezia had even realised what was happening. But when she pulled back, Benezia's eyes were wide and crystal blue and focused on her own.

"Aethyta, no," she said, so softly that she well might not have spoken.

"Yeah," Aethyta countered, just as quietly, slipping her hand behind Nezzie's neck to pull her in once again.

This time, when their lips met, the outcome was rather more satisfactory. After the initial, gentle, tentative brush, Benezia's lips parted beneath hers, letting her tongue slip past, and, for the first time in more than a century Aethyta could taste her. She was Benezia and salt and Kahje, peace and home.

And then Benezia's hands found her shoulders, and she found herself being gently pushed away.

"No. It would... not be wise."

"Fuck 'wise'," was her only reply as she leaned forward again.

The fire of her anger had quickened, changed, turned inwards and, goddess, but she _wanted_. She'd tried to tell herself it wasn't true, but her damned treacherous heart had wanted Benezia from the moment she'd first laid eyes upon her again, sleeping and pale beneath the glass. The rest of her had wanted too.

But before she could capture her lips once more, Benezia's hand snaked up between them to press two restraining fingers to Aethyta's own, holding her back.

"'thy, no," Nezzie said, looking frightened, sounding lost. "I... do not think I could, even if-"

Even if she'd wanted to. Right.

Suddenly, staring into those sad, confused, wide blue eyes, it was all too much. The war. The camp. Their ruined homeworld. Their shattered people. Her fucked-up life. The daughter she'd never known. The fragile shell of the asari she loved, who still didn't want her anymore. Her poor, sweet, darling, baby girl, dead, dead, dead.

Goddess! Aethyta could still remember the first time she'd held Zara in her arms, put her to her breast and felt her latch and begin to suck. She'd stroked the impossibly soft and delicate skin of her head and neck, a rich blue many shades removed from Aethyta's own lavender, and argued half-heartedly with Drakan about her name, content in their company and her own satisfying exhaustion. Drakan had won, of course, in the end. Aethyta'd wanted her second daughter to have something lasting of her father's, and a name was a simple enough gift to give.

Aethyta pressed forward once more, but this time it was not for a kiss but to bury her face in the crook of Benezia's neck and wrap her arms around her too-slender waist, clinging on for dear life.

It took what seemed like an eternity for her to cry herself out. Benezia held her wordlessly throughout, resting her head against the top of her own and rubbing her back in light circles until the sobs turned teary shudders and the shudders to dry-eyed shaking. Between that and the brandy, it was all she could do to keep her feet under her as Benezia led her back to the bed, and she could barely keep her eyes open once she'd been helped into it, on her side, and had the pillows arranged beneath her head and body, the covers pulled up loosely to cover her.

But there was a subtle wrongness to it that slowly filtered through the growing, leaden haze of alcohol and emotional exhaustion. She forced her eyes back open in time to see Benezia turning away, as if to go, and felt a pang of distress. She clumsily reached a hand out for her, succeeding in catching her arm on the second attempt. Benezia turned back and looked down at her, a clear question in her eyes.

"Stay?" she asked plaintively, her hand finding and taking Benezia's own. "Please?"

It seemed like hours before Benezia responded, and then it was to sigh and close her eyes and nod her head ever so slowly.

"Yes."


	20. Benezia

**Benezia**

When morning finally came, Benezia was already awake, though it would be rather more accurate to say that she simply had not slept. This was not an uncommon state of affairs of late: sleep brought rest, but with it also came dreaming, and she was weary unto death of the dreams.

The rest itself was not necessarily to be desired either. With a rested body came alertness and awareness, thought and remembrance, none of which were much welcomed. The twilight state she had once feared had become a refuge, of sorts, and her body had found the knack of sleeping just enough that she spent her days not quite awake and not quite asleep, neither thinking nor feeling in as much as that was possible. Hours drifted past in an unnumbered fugue, and she could not rightly say what she had been doing before Liara and the news intended for Aethyta had found her instead, and she'd remembered her old self, for a time. There were some things that a daughter simply should not have to do, no matter the circumstances.

Aethyta was a warm but dead weight against and across her, lost to slumber so completely that she hardly seemed to breathe. A whole bottle of ice brandy, consumed quickly, would do that to a person, especially atop the other liquor Aethyta had drunk earlier in the evening. Perhaps it had not been wise to enable her so. But Aethyta has always sought physical solace for emotional distress, and if it had not been alcohol, she would have come to it via some other means, likely at the expense of someone unprepared to deal with it. There would have been blood.

Never mind that there very nearly had been anyway.

The shoulder not being used as a pillow ached, and Benezia knew without looking that there would be bruises there, five of them, a handprint in purple and black. That had been unanticipated, uncharacteristic. Benezia had expected anger, certainly - shouting and accusations and threats and more - but not violence. Never violence directed at her. Even at their worst, towards the end, when the heated words flew and biotics flared, Benezia had known implicitly that Aethyta's bluster and posturing were just that, that the only bruises she had to fear were of ego.

But they had been bonded, then, and 'then' was more than a century ago. Things were different now.

Worse, though, than the rough touch itself was the hard, unwelcome press of memory that had come with it. Benezia had once again found herself back with Saren, his taloned hands upon her body, the unctuous whispers of his ship inside her buckling mind, and the horrible churn of fear and disgust and desperation to please rising within her heart.

It was so _vivid_ , the memory. The hard, predatory bulk of Saren standing before her, his talons pricking her skin enough to draw blood. The puffs of his breath on her face as he whispered and raged, breath as dank and laden with corrupted as the air around them. The oily, strangely organic texture of the walls and fittings, and the disconcerting, disorientating angles of the room that ever gave one the sensation of falling, of being a tiny, insignificant, uncomfortable thing. The knowledge, deep within the most hidden depths of herself, that if she stayed she was utterly doomed, but that she would only spread the corruption further if she fled.

But then had come gentleness, repentance, affection, things she had never received from Saren in that warm, dark, horrible place. With them, the spell had broken, at least in part. She was back on Thessia, in their ship, the one place on the planet where she did not have to look upon all that she and her masters had wrought. And Aethyta-

Aethyta was kissing her.

It was the alcohol, Benezia knew, and Aethyta's need to meet death with life that drove the kiss and not any genuine want of her, but the feeling of being desired again, after all that had happened, was welcome all the same - surprisingly so. It was life, in one of its most basic, simple expressions. More, it was _hope_ , warming her from within as it had the day Aethyta had held her, so carefully, and promised her that things would get better with time. She had even allowed herself to pretend, as then, for a few, precious heartbeats, that things were other than they were.

Then sense had come, and reason too, and she'd broken away. It was not a wise act, the kiss, in truth only a few heartbeats away from sheerest folly, and it would be unethical, besides. Benezia had left, and it was done, and she'd no right to seek affirmation from Aethyta, least of all at a time when her own need for comfort made her vulnerable. Benezia had done harm enough already.

But, more, beneath the rational arguments against intimacy lay the dark and unnameable terror that rose at the thought of there being anything further than a fleeting kiss. The very _idea_ of letting another touch her mind again chilled her to her core, drenched her in an icy sweat. She had been broken once, already, and the second breaking could only be easier. Those who did not seek to dominate her could simply reach in and _take_ , if they so desired, stealing away, piece by piece, what little of herself remained to her.

And Aethyta would be able see what she had wrought, if she wished. Benezia no longer had any way of stopping her. Dreadful as knowing herself what had been done, worse was the idea of another seeing the full depths of the horror, having to face them in shame afterwards. Once, when they were bonded, she had been sure Aethyta would never go where she was not invited, but she had also once been sure that Aethyta would never lay a hand on her in anger. Such guarantees had been laid waste to on the day Benezia had last crossed the threshold of their home, never to return.

Much of what she wished to conceal lay too close to the surface to be hidden anyway.

The danger had been averted, ultimately, and the refusal seemed to be what Aethyta had actually needed, rather than assistance engaging in what would merely be another avoidance strategy. The poor, dear asari had gotten into her head at a very young age - and here Benezia had always squarely blamed her parents and their unorthodox approaches to, among other things, child-rearing and conflict resolution - that tears were weakness, and, more importantly, that if you didn't cry over a thing, it couldn't actually hurt you. It was a habit of thinking so long ingrained that it was nigh impossible to break, and, more often than not, was one that meant Aethyta let her wounds chafe and fester until they turned rotten, into anger and grudge, or burst of their own accord, often explosively, unless someone stood by with a lancet in hand to release them in a controlled fashion.

Had the wounds Benezia left upon her gone bad? The answer to that was quite obviously yes, visible in the way Aethyta's anger flared every time they strayed from safe topics of conversation, visible in the fresh bruises upon Benezia's arm. And yet, more than once, in the second waking nightmare of her life, there had been acceptance, support, even tenderness. Affection. A kiss.

Benezia allowed herself, not for the first time that night, the luxury of touch, tracing the line of a jaw, the sweep of a crest, an expanse of bare back and shoulder and arm that was so familiar to her but changed in a hundred subtle ways since she'd last held her like this, more than a century before. New, mysterious scars and small blemishes had appeared, begging questions and investigation. Stretches of unmarked skin that had once been accented up by faded pink stripes, the tips of her crests, roughening and paling ever so slightly, and all the other subtle signs of her advancing years. The deeply furrowed brow that pulled her sleeping countenance into a slight scowl.

Aethyta would never be considered beautiful by the standards of their people. Of course, asari were not supposed to care about external appearances, but they'd never quite managed to let go of their own societal ideals of beauty, and it was a notion Benezia had struggled with overcoming much of her life. Aethyta's face was a bit too round, her eyes just a little too widely and deeply set and her nose too broad, too flat, and too often broken in any case. She was small-breasted and thick of waist, stocky and muscular - for an asari, at least - rather than tall, light and lithe. She moved with purpose and efficiency rather than grace, save in the midst of any battle, great or small, where she flowed like water.

But it hadn't mattered. It had never mattered at all, in fact, a discovery that come as both a surprise and delight to Benezia, so many decades ago, long after been resigned to her particular, narrow preferences. There had been recognition, too, of the irony at the heart of it: all those centuries of endless, fruitless searching, and the first person to whom she'd been genuinely, deeply attracted to in the ideal sense, based on personality first, was another asari anyway. And, of course, they had to meet after she had ruled out daughters of her own and elected to devote her life to her faith and her people. The Goddess moved in mysterious ways.

Or so she'd thought at the time.

Of course, it hadn't taken Benezia long to discover the ways in which Aethyta was beautiful. That devilish, knowing smirk, the way her eyes twinkled when she was planning mischief. The infectious laugh, the one that lit up her whole face and shook her body with mirth. The sheer _physicality_ of her, her complete and total comfort with her own body and her willingness to use it; her assurance in her own strength. That voice, of course, smoke roiling through honey, that purred such dreadful, toe-curling things in her ear while she tried to work or think or teach or do anything, really, that did not involve Aethyta and some sort of a supportive surface, preferably horizontal. Her hands, slightly larger than Benezia's own, with their scarred knuckles and rough nails, fingers strong and calloused but as capable of being gentle as they were of leaving bruises.

Benezia found one of them now, balled up and pressed against her side. But when she placed her own atop it, Aethyta, finally, stirred, muttering something completely unintelligible before rolling over onto her back, then, a few seconds later, onto her other side, taking most of the blanket with her. She settled her head more deeply against the pillows, wrapped the blanket more tightly around her body and began, quietly at first, but with quickly growing assurance, to snore.

Benezia watched her for a moment, then turned back to stare up at the ceiling, possessed of a sudden, absurd urge towards laughter. She had wondered, more than once over the decades, if leaving Aethyta had truly been the best thing to do. More than once, particularly during those first, few difficult years, she'd found herself on the verge of calling or writing her, begging for forgiveness, for her to come back to them. If she had remembered, then, Aethyta's tendency to snore obnoxiously when drunk, she might have found herself rather more resolute.

The poor, dear, silly asari. Her hangover tomorrow - later today - would be terrible, and her heartache no less so.

The thought killed any fleeting impulse towards inappropriate mirth, and she sighed. There was little she could do, now, to ease the heartache, but the hangover, once again, could perhaps be provided for.

She rose from bed, shivering as her bare feet touched the uncovered metal of the floor, and dressed. She had to pause midway through, and once again when she was done, to let the cabin stop swimming. When was the last time she had eaten? She couldn't rightly remember. Yesterday. It must have been yesterday, some time. What else had she done yesterday? She had ended up in the dining hall somehow. When not abed, it was easiest to follow the instructions of another, to let her body go through the motions of work. Menial tasks. Perhaps she had done that.

Benezia made her way, somewhat shakily, out of the cabin and attended to the basic needs of her body, dodging the shards of glass still littering the galley on the way. Cleaning her hands afterwards, she found herself caught by her own reflection in the mirror, distantly surprised by how gaunt and ragged she appeared, as if she were fading away to nothing.

But that was what she wanted, wasn't it? An end? To the dreams and the memories and the headaches, to the guilt and the shame and the helpless despair?

But she wasn't, as Aethyta had so elegantly put it, the only one to have been hurt by the war and the events surrounding it. What made her so special, that she should be free to seek her escape while those around her suffered, would continue to suffer after she was gone? She might have been special, once. Been important. In another time, another life, she'd had pride and power, respect and even the love of her people. No longer. Now, she was nothing but grief. Now, she had nothing, not even herself.

No. That was not entirely true, was it? At least Benezia still had her daughter. That was not something to be cast aside and ignored, not when it had been taken away, so easily, from so many others. From Aethyta. She should be thankful that she was spared that burden of grief. That Liara was spared such grief of her own.

Her feet led her, then, to the other end of the ship and the nigh-empty cargo hold and the cot upon which her daughter still slept, pulled up alongside the desk and monitors, looming large and dark. Benezia let herself perch on the edge of the bed to watch her, as she had sometimes done when Liara was young and she had returned home too late to do her part in their bedtime ritual. Liara slept now, as she had always done: messily, the bedclothes tangled up around her body, both feet and one arm dangling limply over the cot's sides. Benezia had sometimes wondered if such sprawling was a cause or a symptom of her daughter's un-asari preference for sleeping alone. The unmarked side of her face was pressed tightly into her pillow, leaving the scarred expanse of flesh that comprised the right to smile faintly up at her. The empty socket, though, dark and angry without its concealing patch, watched her with clear accusation.

Where had she been, when Liara had been wounded so? Who had sat and worried by her bedside while she lay unconscious, struggling to breathe? Had anyone been there afterwards, when she woke for the first time, in pain and afraid? Had someone been waiting to tell her that she was still beautiful and perfect in every way, that she was so smart and so very strong, stronger than her mother had ever been? And where was this 'Commander Shepard' everyone spoke so highly of? The 'Saviour of the Galaxy' who had used her daughter's affections so. Why had she let this happen to Benezia's precious, beautiful daughter?

No, no, again, that was an unworthy thought. Shepard, by all accounts, was injured even worse than Liara was. And she did not know enough about their… relationship to rightly say what Shepard should or should not be doing. She had meant to ask, but-

An alarm sounded, an ugly, jarring tone designed to irritate, jolting her from her introspection and her daughter from her slumber, setting Benezia's temples to throbbing along with each new blare. Liara cursed sleepily, a quarian word Benezia was quite certain she had never taught her, and fumbled blindly in the direction of the alarm. When her questing fingers came up empty, she cursed again - a torrent of turian words, this time-, pulled the pillow over her head and curled up into a tight ball, as if shielding herself from the noise. Benezia looked around for its source herself and quickly found it: Liara's omnitool, buzzing in the centre of her desk. Rather than rise she leaned over, stretching until she could just lay a finger upon it, and pulled it until it was close enough to pick up. The 'sleep' button was helpfully flashing, and she pressed her thumb to it.

Silence, blessedly, returned, lasting several seconds before Liara uncurled herself and rolled over to stare blearily up at her.

"Mother?" she said around a yawn. "You're up early."

"As, it would seem, you are meant to be." She held out the subdued omni-tool. "I suppose I should ask where you came by such language."

Liara had the grace to look slightly embarrassed, even as she accepted the omni-tool from Benezia's outstretched hand and slid it over her bare wrist. The wince that accompanied the subsequent transfer of the tool from her left wrist to her right did not go unnoticed.

"I spent some time living amongst soldiers. I am afraid to say that I may have picked up some bad habits."

"At a hundred and ten and a hero besides, you may be entitled to a bad habit or two," Benezia allowed, forcing a smile. Liara met it with a hesitant one of her own.

"Thank you. I think." Her eyes flicked away from Benezia's and over her shoulder, back down the empty cargo bay. "How is Aethyta?"

"Heartsick and, I suspect, very badly hungover. But she is sleeping, for now."

"Will she be alright?"

The question was oddly child-like in tone, and Benezia found herself remembering a time, many centuries ago now, when she'd watched her own mother mourn a lover, and the worry and feeling of helplessness that had come from wanting to help, in some way, but not knowing how, or if one should even try. Liara, despite everything that had happened, still had a good heart, to worry so for the father she barely knew.

"She will heal, with time."

 _Time heals all_. It was the great, unofficial maxim of their people. Scars and unimportant memories ultimately fade away into nothing, leaving you with only the things worth cherishing. Time had healed her mother. The question was only whether Aethyta had time enough left.

"Will you?"

Whether she herself did.

"I don't know," Benezia answered honestly, looking away, down at her hands. She surprised herself, though, by adding: "I hope so."

Her daughter might not need her anymore, but neither did she need to worry for her. Or mourn for her. She was too young -far too young-and had concerns enough already in any case.

Liara's hand, with its missing and damaged fingers, came to rest atop hers.

"I do too."

Benezia folded her hands around her daughter's and they sat in silence for a time, Benezia uncertain as to what to say or do next. She'd always found it at least slightly difficult to relate to this daughter of hers, and the difficulty had grown as Liara had. Another reason, perhaps, why matriarchs rarely had children: the age gap was too extreme. For all that she had never really felt or thought of herself as getting older, the simple truth of the matter was that she was centuries removed from maidenhood, let alone childhood, and even asari recall, the trained memory of a priestess, was imperfect. Suddenly finding herself responsible for an insatiably curious, unbelievably energetic little person had revealed to her all the ways in which she had, in fact, aged.

As a child, Liara's impatience and sudden fancies, her abrupt changes of mind and complete lack of common sense tended towards the wearing, and had come as something of a shock besides to someone more accustomed to dealing with placid matrons and subtle matriarchs. Even Aethyta, for all her exuberant love of life and innumerable vices, was at least consistent in them, and, if incautious with her words at times, was considered with her opinions. She'd always had a common sense you could deflect bullets with in any case. Without her, with Liara, Benezia was acutely aware of how she had come to cloak her words with the reflection of days and her actions in the caution of years where once she would have spoken and acted with more alacrity, dealing with the imagined consequences as they happened rather than trying to stave them off before the fact.

When Liara had grown from a shy but active child into a shy, moody and withdrawn adolescent, Benezia had struggled to remember a time when her own confidence in dealing with others had been so lacking. She had struggled, too, to understand and empathise as well as she felt she ought to have. The rapidly changing fashions and trends and culture of youth were something only at the periphery of her awareness, and her few attempts to educate herself in such vagaries and then relate to her daughter on those terms had been met with rather more puzzlement and even embarrassment than thanks.

And when it came to helping Liara find children of her own age to engage with, she had proven similarly lacking. A life of constant travel did them few favours, the children of diplomats and entrepreneurs often jaded, unwilling to invest in friendships doomed to last but a few weeks or months. Benezia's own friends and closest acolytes were of an age with her and had children long since grown or none at all, and her estrangement from her own sisters meant that there were no cousins of any degree. Liara, for her part, had been unwilling to even try sports again after one moderately unsuccessful (and a second completely disastrous) skyball season, and had shunned her every other suggestion, from debating clubs to actual clubbing, in favour of hiding away at home or in the hotel suite, her nose buried in a book.

Then, of course, had come the inevitable, if subdued, clashes of ideology and will that marked the beginning of maidenhood, and on the heels of that an unwelcome estrangement that had left Benezia feeling not only very old but very alone. No daughter. No bondmate. Just her work and her acolytes, her secrets and her regrets. She had not been _unhappy_ , precisely, during that period of her life, but there had been an undeniable hole in it that she had struggled to fill with friends and work and study, and the comfort of a different lover's arms.

And now Liara was maiden grown, an adult in every sense of the word, and Benezia was the one who hid away.

"You know," Liara began softly, and when Benezia glanced over towards her, she found her daughter lying flat on her back, her eye shut, "I still find it hard to picture the two of you together. She's not what I expected at all."

"So you've said."

"Can I ask..?"

"You may always ask. But I may decline to answer."

"What did you see in her?"

Benezia looked back down at the hand between hers and tried to ignore the throbbing of her head, while she searched for an answer. Liara's hands were slightly bigger than her own, but they shared the same long, delicate fingers. It was one of many such similarities between the two of them. Firstborn asari typically resembled their mothers far more strongly than any subsequent offspring, she knew, though their understanding of the whys of this, as it was with numerous other aspects of their species' reproduction, was as much based in speculation as science. But even with the knowing of that, it had always pained her, on some level, that there wasn't more of Aethyta in her daughter. Their daughter.

"Tell me, what do you see in this 'Shepard' of yours?"

She thought she succeeded admirably in keeping the slight distaste from her voice as she spoke the name.

"Shepard?" Liara sounded surprised, even taken aback, almost as if no-one had asked her such a question before. "She is... The way... I mean..." She paused and seemed to gather her thoughts, continuing more slowly: "She is brave, and kind-hearted, and intelligent, and... I suppose, she's unlike anyone else I've ever met."

Benezia's smile this time was slightly less forced.

"There you are then."

"Oh." A slight, almost disappointed sound. "But there must have been more to it than that."

"Must there?"

"She said you were together for more than a century. That suggests she had more than novelty value." She paused again, eye opening even as her brows creased into an uneven frown. "Not that I consider Shepard to be a novelty. Um. Or, really, that I think Aethyta is either. I mean, she's very, ah, _interesting_. 'Colourful', I think, is the word that Ashley used."

"'Colourful' is a good word," Benezia agreed. Colourful was certainly the least of what Aethyta had been called over the years. "Do you like her?"

Liara gave this a moment's thought.

"I do, actually. Though I did not really know what to make of her at first."

"Few do."

Benezia certainly hadn't at the time. But she'd let herself be swept off her feet anyway, in defiance of all their social mores - not to mention all common sense - by a rogue with a twinkle in her eye, a smirk on her lips and a firm hand on her behind. A whirlwind romance, in every sense of the phrase, it should never have lasted as long as it did, but she had found in Aethyta not just a lover and a partner, but a piece of her mind and her soul that she hadn't known was missing until the first time they'd melded. Finding the one who completed you in that way was so rare it was mythologised.

"But she gave me a commando unit to use during the war just when I needed them most. And she talked to me a bit. About you."

"She did?"

She shouldn't be surprised, really. She was the one thing Aethyta and Liara had in common, for all that she had also been the thing that kept them apart.

"Yes. She said that you were smart, and nicer than she was, and were the only person who ever really listened to her ideas."

"Her ideas were often good," Benezia remembered. "Unfortunately, she was not always very good at articulating them to the people who needed to hear them."

She had never had the patience for politics, Aethyta. Which was a bit odd, perhaps, given that she was perfectly capable of spending years at a time working in a terrible cover job, carefully gathering up intelligence or simply waiting and watching for the perfect moment to strike. But, on the other hand, she had also never been one to waste words, or mince them to spare another's feelings unnecessarily, and she was even less able to stand those she perceived as idiots. Unfortunately, nine-tenths of the matriarchs on Thessia fell into that particular category, at least as far as she was concerned. Sometimes Benezia had found herself agreeing with that particular assessment.

"She seemed more… sad than angry that you left her. And she didn't really seem to know why you did."

"Oh."

There was an inexpert hook at the end of Liara's last sentence, and she ignored it in favour of focusing on the one immediately prior. She would have expected anger from Aethyta when talking of her. Certainly, she had seen it herself these, past weeks, on more than on occasion. Had she simply put it aside, at the time, for Liara's sake? Because of the war, or because she thought she, Benezia, was dead? Or...

Benezia absently rubbed at the bruises on her arm, as if they could banish the memories of a kiss, drunken and uncomfortable and ultimately refused.

"Did she... did she say anything else? About me?"

Liara suddenly looked uncomfortable.

"Um. A bit. But nothing important, really."

The evasion was as inexpert as the hook had been.

"'Really'?"

"Really. In fact-"

" _Liara_ ," she said, and Liara actually squirmed slightly back in her cot at the warning in her tone.

"She was, ah, quite effusive about you, um, I mean your..."

Liara shut her eye, slipped her hand out from atop Benezia's and waved it instead in her general direction.

"Physical attributes."

"Oh. _Oh_."

"Yes. Quite loudly too. In a public cafe."

"Oh."

She gave this a moment's thought. Aethtya had never really seen the point in hiding her vices, indulging in them wholeheartedly no matter how uncomfortable others around her felt – sometimes indulging in them simply _to_ make others uncomfortable, which she supposed a vice in and of itself. It was an attitude that Benezia found herself agreeing with more and more as the years went by.

"Well, she always was very appreciative," she conceded. "I could never wear anything low-cut without running the risk of getting backed into some corner somewhere. If I had a credit for every outfit she ruined trying to get me out of it-"

To be the subject of such single-minded pursuit was undeniably thrilling, but even more so was the discovery of a partner who was more than willing to indulge in every idle fantasy she'd ever had about sex in the backs of skycars, or barely-hidden corners of conference centres while delegations of the great and powerful lingered within earshot.

Liara's eye shot back open, a look of abject horror crossing her face.

"Mother!"

"Yes?"

When Liara failed to respond for several seconds, and the expression on her face remained equally unchanged, Benezia sighed.

"You wished to know what I saw in her. Physical attraction and mutual compatibility was certainly a part of it, as it is with most lasting relationships. Don't be so prudish."

"I'm not prudish. I just happen to have a very good imagination. And I do not wish to employ it thinking about my parents..." she trailed off, waving her hand vaguely in the air once again.

"Having sex?" she prompted, provoking another wince. "Then I would suggest that you never raise the topic with your father. If you've not already discovered, she does rather like to brag."

She paused, memories flooding back in a warm rush. Languid morning spent abed, slowly exploring to find new nuances in each other's bodies. Being taken and marked, quick and hard, in a dressing room, over her half-hearted protests. The simple comfort of a warm, soft body nestled against her own, strong arms around her.

"Truth be told, she may have some cause to," she continued eventually. "She could be quite inventive."

Liara cringed back against her pillows, and covered her face with her hand.

"Mother, as wonderful as it is to see you smile," she said, voice slightly muffled, "if you don't stop right now, I may be forced to do something drastic."

If having a daughter had revealed to Benezia all of the ways in which she had grown old, Liara had also helped her to find the parts of herself that were still young. Stories and rhymes, riddles and clapping games that she'd thought she had long since forgotten had come back to her surprisingly quickly, to be shared and delighted in once more. Walks in the park became adventures, and not just due to the difficulty of keeping Liara from digging up half of the lawn. Benezia cancelled meetings in favour of tea parties, and deferred more than one real press conference to attend pretend ones and 'lectures' about Liara's most recent 'discoveries'. She had never expected herself, at more than seven hundred, to while away entire afternoons playing at Justicars, or C-Seccers and Mercs, or that she would rope the more understanding of her guards and acolytes into playing the parts of various villains. Respected matriarchs did not use their daughters as distractions while they stole fresh, hot pastries from the kitchens, and then they most certainly did not blame the head chef's pet _iesabeast_ for the resulting shortfall.

Of course, she had been used as such a distraction herself, by Aethyta, on more than one occasion, but then Aethyta had never once claimed to be respectable. Quite the opposite. And there were other ways in which Aethyta had striven to remind her that there was still an idealistic, adventurous young maiden and a romantic, whimsical matron buried somewhere beneath the passage of centuries and the weight of responsibility, propriety and expectation. The times Benezia had come home, after a long day at the Forum or the baths or lecture halls, to find her bondmate lounging atop her desk or in their bed wearing nothing but a bracelet and a wicked smile weren't the half of it.

They were good memories, all, regardless of how events had played out, or how everything presently stood. Something to hold to, if she could. A daughter's first word might have some power against the memory of a cherished acolyte's last breath; a night, sated and spent and secure in the arms of a lover, some balm against the nightmares of the frozen planet, the dank and terrible ship.

But even as she had the thought, the hopelessness and the crushing despair, black and empty, deep enough to swallow her whole, rose again. What a useless, worthless, pathetic creature she was! Grasping at, clinging to the past, to the lover she had used and cast aside, the daughter she had tried to kill. She was nothing, insignificant, less than an insect, unworthy of anything good that the galaxy had to offer. She had always been so, even if she had not known it until Saren and his ship revealed her place in the galaxy to her. She was-

"Mother?"

She could _feel_ the pattern of her thoughts start to shift and twist out from underneath her, back into the groove that had been ground so deeply within her mind. Goddess, but it was so very easy to slip back into the mindset the machines had forced upon her, let the throb and ache of her temples fade even as the darkness rose within her. So very easy, and so very tempting.

And that, of course, was the trap. A single stray thought, a half-moment's longing to be free from it all and the cycle would start anew, Benezia willingly spiralling downwards, inwards, until she sought and found nothingness once more. A place where there was no pain, no shame, no guilt and no memory.

But she needed to be better than this. For Liara, who bore such terrible hurts with dignity and determination, and who loved her still, for all she was unworthy of it. She did not need to worry for her as well. For Aethyta, who had met her, despite her betrayal, with as much compassion as anger. She deserved such compassion in return. And for her people, the countless thousands of asari who had fought and suffered and seen loved ones die while she lay safe in peaceful slumber, who now struggled to help each other and rebuild while she hid and let herself waste away. She had once worked so earnestly to bring about their suffering; they were owed whatever she had left, however little, to give.

Liara had been late to speak, late enough to cause consternation and considerable concern. Unwarranted, in the end, of course: her first word had been 'go', accompanied by a pudgy fist pointed out the open window one bright spring afternoon. 'Mama', though, had been a close second, those same tiny hands reaching up for her, clinging to her gown as she hummed a fragment of lullaby.

Benezia shut her eyes and brought her hand to her temple, breathing in slowly through her nose and out through her mouth as the pain spiked and then subsided somewhat. When she opened them again, Liara was sitting up, reaching out for her in concern. She waved her daughter's hands away but had no chance to further reply before someone behind them cleared their throat pointedly.

"I'm sorry to intrude, Doctor," Palla said in the tones of one who wasn't necessarily. She had a tired smile for Liara as she entered the hold that quickly faded when her eyes met Benezia's. "But the reporters from yesterday are here, along with four others. I've got them in the dining hall at the moment, but they're asking for you."

Liara winced once more and closed her eye, bringing her own hand to her forehead, unconsciously a mirror of Benezia's own gesture seconds before.

"You know, I had almost convinced myself that yesterday was a dream," she sighed. "Are they causing any problems?"

The matron shook her head in reply.

"No, but then hardly anyone's up. Give it an hour and half of the camp will be queuing in front of them to offer interviews, I'm sure, and after that all bets are off." Her eyes fell on Benezia again, and she could see the distaste hidden behind them. "I don't think they know about you yet, Matriarch, yet, but it won't be long until they do."

The press. Goddess. She had known that this day would come. They had spoken of it, after all, before they had made planetfall, and Benezia had agreed that denying her return would do more harm than good. It had been some mercy that evidently few of the residents had the means or were interested enough, in amongst everything else of note, to spread the word. But the grace period was certainly over now, and she had no idea what she might say when faced with a camera and an inquiring, accusing voice. What _could_ she say, other than that she was sorry? Truly and deeply? That she did not expect, nor ask for forgiveness?

Liara glanced between the two of them, her frown deepening.

"I do not want them talking to you just yet," she told Benezia, "and certainly not without me there." To Palla, she said: "Can you stall them for a few hours? I haven't had time to go through the overnight transmissions, and I need to see what else has been said about what happened yesterday before I talk to them."

Liara had gone somewhere yesterday, hadn't she? To... Cianna? Somewhere to the east, in any case. She had asked Benezia about the matriarchs she thought she might encounter there - not yesterday, but perhaps the day before, or the day before that? It was difficult to remember.

"I can try," Palla said, without a much in the way of either enthusiasm or confidence. "But I've never really dealt with the media before now. That was always Hillie's job."

"A tour," Benezia interrupted as the idea came to her, accompanied by a stab of pain through her skull. "A tour of the camp and the surrounding grounds. Emergency procedures. It should buy you an hour to prepare at the least, and more if you are lucky."

"I might be able to do that," the matron replied slowly, looking over at Liara for reassurance.

She shrugged.

"It's worth a try."

"Is there no one with a media or public relations background that you can call into service? I mean no disrespect to you, Palla," Benezia said, inclining her head carefully in the matron's direction, "but diverting the media is a job best left to someone with experience and training."

The odds of there being _someone_ in the camp with the requisite background was decent, she judged. Armali was a city of politics and a city of commerce; both were endeavours that created a thriving media-management sub-industry.

Liara's frown turned speculative.

"I think I saw someone..." she said, scooting up off of the cot to slip behind her terminals. A few seconds later she made a pleased sound, and swung the monitors around for them to see the dossier of an asari with midnight-blue skin and slightly lighter markings that highlighted her eyes. "Belia D'Azuma. Apprentice Press Secretary with Mosst Electronics for the past five years.

"Palla, could you please find her and bring her to me immediately? She and her daughter are in Hall Five, I think."

"Of course," Palla said and quickly departed, though not before casting another hard look in Benezia's direction.

"She doesn't like you," Liara said once she was gone, surprise in her voice.

"She does not. And with good reason."

Liara sighed heavily.

"What happened wasn't your fault, Mother. You were indoctrinated. People will understand that eventually."

"Perhaps," she conceded, unwilling to enter into an argument on the topic.

Liara did not understand and, if there was any small bit of grace in the galaxy left for Benezia, never would. Her daughter, however, refused to be mollified.

"There's nothing 'perhaps' about it!" she insisted, a touch of anger colouring her tone. "We have proof. Cerberus was good for that, at least. The Reapers did it to thousands of people – the entire batarian government for one. They were torn apart from within. It's why they fell so quickly."

"Just as you say."

Liara's unmarked brow quirked in overt anger.

"Mother-" she began, then stopped and sighed again, and this time it was heavy with exasperation as she visibly reined her frustration back in. "Thank you. For the tour idea, I mean."

"You are welcome, of course. Thought it does beg the question of why reporters have arrived here, now, after we've gone so long unmolested. I take it your meeting yesterday did not go well..?"

"Not exactly, no." Liara winced at recollection. "I may have indulged in another bad habit of mine."

"Oh?"

"Saying things without thinking them entirely through." She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, and then rose, gesturing for Benezia to take her place. "Um. It might actually be easier to show you."

And so Benezia sat and watched and listened, and then replayed the key sections of the interview again twice-over, trying to contain her growing horror while behind her Liara held a hasty briefing with Palla and the bleary-eyed D'Azuma, who frowned but took copious notes on her omnitool.

Liara's words were no less than an impassioned repudiation of their system of governance, and those who had held power during the war. The anger and contempt behind them was, to a mother's eye, raw, and likely just as apparent to others. Contempt for everything Benezia had believed in and worked for, everything she _was_ in her old life.

There was nothing new in that, save the identity of the speaker, and the wounding the renunciation carried on a personal level. Hot-headed maidens had been railing against the system since the dawn of time, to the amused tolerance of their elders. Anarchists, for the most part, the most passionate or charismatic of which would leave the Republics to found some new colony or another, which itself would eventually, invariably return to the fold as those maidens became matrons and sought stability and security only the greater Republics could provide. So it went, as it always had.

But this was different in tone and, reading between the lines, in purpose. Liara had effectively called upon their people give power to new leaders, but had declined to nominate who those leaders should be. She had decried the system, but suggested no replacement. It was as if she expected the answer for both to be obvious to the viewer, and it was, to Benezia at least, particularly with the urging towards quick, unilateral action:

Not leaders by _a_ leader. Someone who had acquitted themselves well during the war. Someone young, decisive and famous.

_Goddess._

On the monitor, the vid began another loop. In it, the stadium of thousands roared its approval as Liara's party walked through it. In her old life, Benezia had filled such stadiums on a few occasions, but the kind of response from she was watching was reserved for only the most famous of pop stars and celebrity athletes, not shy young archaeologists who regularly got so wrapped up in their studies they forgot to eat and still blushed at the thought of their parents having a love-life.

It was hard to comprehend that the angry, passionate young maiden on the screen was her Liara. A few short years should not have wrought so much change in a person. Harder still to comprehend what it meant, if this was indeed her, and if even a fraction of those listening headed the words being spoken: blood on the streets, fistfights in the forums, and quiet knives in the dark.

Quiet knives for her daughter. Not a young hot-head, shouting into a vacuum and easily ignored, but a genuine threat with a popular following and a real powerbase. In the eyes of many, she would need to be dealt with, and quickly.

"Goddess, Little Wing," she whispered when the two of them were briefly alone once more. "What have you done?"

Liara's reply, accompanied by a sad, wan smile, did nothing to assuage the sudden fear that seized her heart:

"Raised a storm, Mother. Raised one hell of a storm."


	21. Liara

**Liara**

* * *

By the time noon rolled around the day after what she was coming to think of as The Interview, Liara had been just about ready to crawl back into bed to pull the covers back up over her head and wish the world away for a while. By mid-afternoon of the second day, she was giving serious consideration to what Shepard would call the 'judicious application of' against selected individuals. By the evening of the third, the idea of stealing away in the freighter in the middle of the night was at the forefront of her mind. She could fly off and find some long-forgotten world where she would never ever had to see another living soul apart from Shepard for as long as she lived. Maybe Ilos. She had always wanted to go back to Ilos. She and Shepard could live there and explore the ruins in peace and blessed silence and maybe emerge one day many, many years later when the galaxy was rather more sane and had hopefully forgotten them completely.

She settled for screaming into a pillow in the privacy of her makeshift office.

It was all too much. Far too much for one person. Too many people, too many questions and demands and requests and offers of help. Too many bad ideas for every good one, too much useless information for every good tidbit. It was worse, in many ways, than being the Broker; for all that the sheer _volume_ of information pouring through the intel network at its height had been far greater, it had been provided to her by professionals, for the most part, who were expected to present their findings to her in a manner that was unambiguous, detailed and to the point.

And she'd had Feron and Glyph to help her, not to mention the old Broker's notes, protocols and carefully built organisational structure. An army of analysts at her beck and call. Here she was flying blind, trying to sort through rambling letters for glimmers of useful information, or being frustrated by terse, mysterious missives that could be read in any one of a dozen ways. What she _needed_ was concrete information on resources and population distribution; what she got were pleas for help, vague offers of unspecified assistance and politely-worded death threats. Even when the material was unambiguous, it was rarely good, and the good news never entirely so.

She had, for example, acquired the backing of some of their surviving military. With High Command in tatters following Sword, Shield and Hammer, and the destruction of the Republics coms network, it seemed as though what little remained of their navy and ground forces had returned to their home systems and city-states, whenever possible. Of those who'd found themselves without homes to go back to, three battlecruisers, an even dozen frigates and a supercarrier, the badly-damaged _Elegant Nemesis_ , had sent word that they were awaiting her orders.

This had seemed like wonderful news for all of five minutes, during which her head had started to race with ideas of what she could do with even a pair of functional frigates and their complements of skilled crew. It wasn't much compared to the asari fleet at the height of their power – or even the fleet she'd had the ability to call upon as the Broker – but they could protect aid convoys, run off pirates and do basic repairs on critical systems infrastructure, like coms relays and refuelling stations. But then one of the new reporters - a teal-skinned matron of perhaps five hundred - had gotten wind of it, had seen the commandos and irregulars starting to trickle in their ones and twos and asked her, point blank, how long she had been planning this attempted coup, and if she expected to meet armed resistance, and all the enthusiasm had drained from her.

Liara's response had been a rather stiff and decidedly chilly declaration that this was not a coup, thank you very much, and that she still believed in the democratic principles on which their government was built, but that if people elected to put their trust in her during this crisis period then she would do her best not to let them down as the matriarchy had.

It made her cringe, now, just to think about it. It was exactly the sort of public justification and self-aggrandising dictators, prospective or otherwise, used. Even if she wasn't a dictator. And had absolutely no intention of becoming one. She only doing this because someone had to, and there was no-one else. At least, there was no-one else who was willing to do it on the scale at which it needed to be done. Given her druthers, she'd be on Ilos right now, with Shepard, making good on their mantra.

But the knowledge sat, heavy, in the back of her mind, that she hadn't _meant_ to become the Shadow Broker either. And that, even now, after the Reapers, the reason Liara had stepped into that role in the first place, were officially gone, she found herself extremely reluctant to let go of it entirely.

She'd told herself that what remained of her network was simply still too useful to be allowed to wither and die – and, crippled though it was, it was also still an undeniably useful asset - but she was not so naive that she could pretend that there wasn't a part of her that _liked_ knowing secrets and wielding power across the galactic stage. It was the part of her that could lie, blackmail, threaten and even kill in cold blood if it had to, and then go home to sleep soundly at night. The part that turned her into someone that took a clinical, intellectual pleasure from arranging the utter ruin and damnation of a foe, who could see people as things, as tools to be used and discarded, who instinctively understood the true meaning of 'at all costs'. The part of her she sometimes wished had died that day on Hagalaz with the yahg, and not just been subsumed back into the greater whole.

Power, the old axiom ran, corrupted those who wielded it, and she was no less susceptible to its call than any other asari. How many of history's greatest tyrants had started out with good intentions, just like her, believing that what they did was for the best? That they were the only ones who _could_ do what was needed? Had Apinla Mori once been like her, wanting to serve and protect and better her people, only to give them secret police, re-education camps and five hundred years of paranoia, regression, repression and brutal war?

It was a chilling thought.

But Liara had one thing that Mori didn't have, couldn't possibly have had: Shepard. Shepard would keep her honest, just as she'd done when Liara had first donned the mantle of the Broker. Even if... Even if the worst happened, if Shepard... never woke up, the fear of disappointing her memory would be enough. Shepard did not work so hard, sacrifice _so much_ of herself only for Liara to try to curtail the freedoms so hard-won. Liara would help their people as best she could for as long as needed, and no more. She would give them facts, show them the truths that had been kept hidden from them, present them with the hard lessons she had learned during the Extinction War and let them decide how best to shape their society to face the future. And when that time came - and she hoped to the goddess that it would be sooner rather than later - her service would end, and she would be no more than one voice among many again.

She rubbed at her eye and took a sip from the energy drink in her canteen, trying to stave off an impending headache that came from skipping another breakfast, and refocused on her work. There had to be _some_ way of efficiently organising and sorting all of this information, and getting the information that she actually required. Or... could she delegate some more of the work? The other morning had been the second time Benezia had suggested recruiting a specialist, and the second time she had been right to do so. D'Azuma had proven herself to be a goddess-send that morning and many times since, as much as Palla and Aurelia ever had. If nothing else, Liara would be eternally thankful for keeping the hungry press more or less at bay until she had been ready to face them, and then again until her mother was.

Benezia hadn't been ready, not truly, Liara knew, but they'd both known equally well that they'd had no choice. Benezia had suffered through the brief conference, looking and sounding for all the world like death warmed over – D'Azuma had thought it'd play better with their narrative. She'd let Liara do almost all of the talking, explaining what indoctrination was, and providing an edited account of how and why she and Shepard had hidden her mother.

The stories the little press corps had concocted out of the affair had run the gauntlet from sympathetic to negative to ambiguous; which portrayal ultimately took hold in the public consciousness remained to be seen. There had been little follow up, aside from one or two vox-pops around the camp, especially once it became clear to the corps that neither Liara nor Benezia were going to discuss the matter any further on or off the record. The only other person with an in-depth knowledge of the situation was Aethyta, and Liara didn't think the nature of her relationship with either of them was fully understood by anyone else.

She'd also spent most of the last few days drunk to the point of insensibility, and so was unavailable to be interviewed in any case.

Uncharitable though it was, the thought of that made her angry. Benezia said that the worst would pass, shortly, but, goddess, was it too much to ask to have both of her parents functioning at the same time? Aethyta could be _useful_ now. If she were sober, Liara could put her in charge of interfacing with the ships that had lent their support, organising and evaluating the new commandos. She worked intel herself - maybe she could help sort and analyse all of the reports that were coming in. Instead, Liara had tried to get Benezia to work on that, but her mother, for all she seemed to have snapped out of the worst of her despondency, struggled to concentrate on any one task for long, and had politely but firmly refused to take on any role that had a decision-making capacity.

If Aethyta was out of the picture for now, and Benezia's use limited, who else could she delegate to? Palla was already picking up more and more of the day-to-day running of the camp. Dora had declined taking the lead on anything more than local defence. Some of Matriarch Efrosyni's surviving students? Mother has said that she'd had a good eye for talent, and Palla was certainly a great find. Someone with a communications background who could coordinate the rebuilding of the Republics coms network? That would be definite start. There had to be someone who worked logistics, even if it was only in a basic capacity, who could start getting really down to grips with matching points of supply with points of need. An administrator to take over running of the lost and found boards, and work out how to get people back to their families.

She was scanning her growing database of volunteers, residents and new arrivals, not entirely certain what she was searching but hoping that she'd know it when she saw it, when Aurelia entered the hold with a knock and a cough. Liara looked up and favoured her with a smile.

"I don't suppose that you've come take me away from all of this?" she asked dryly.

The young maiden gave her an odd look, but then smiled hesitantly back.

"Just say the word and I'll find some way to smuggle you out of here," she said. "But I actually came to let you know that we've got another group of arrivals. Two ships this time, with a third about five minutes out."

The ships the reporters had arrived on had only been the first of a string of new arrivals. So far they'd acquired almost five hundred more mouths to feed, but that five hundred had included, praise the Goddess, a physician, who'd been whisked off to the medical shelters before her feet had properly touched ground. Liara really needed to find five minutes to head over there and thank her in person.

"Anyone of note?"

"A dozen commandos from that colony on Istis that got wiped out. Dora's sizing them up now - she says they're provincial, but they've logged a lot of combat hours. The, uh, incoming vessel is Systems Alliance."

Her rational mind pointed out that it couldn't possibly be Shepard, not now. Miranda's last update on her status had come in only last night, hinting at another small, almost imperceptible improvement. This was most likely simply more refugees, who'd simply commandeered the only available vessel available to them, or - Athame preserve her - more reporters.

But even with the rational part of her mind chiming in with a myriad of reasons as to why it couldn't possibly be Shepard, Liara couldn't help the surge of hope that coursed through her body, propelling her up from her chair and out towards the airlock, drawing on her gauntlets as she went. It couldn't be Shepard. But it just - just! - might be. If anyone could make Shepard whole again, bring her back to Liara once more, it was Miranda Lawson. The human had, after all, done it once before. And Shepard had promised Liara that she would come back to her. Liara was certain she'd move the galaxy itself if she had to.

But it wasn't Shepard. Liara realised that with a sinking heart as the ship skimmed by overhead and dipped down to land out in the former killing field beyond the walls, alongside the krogan's dropships and the ships of other new arrivals. It was not even half the size of the original Normandy, a fast attack craft with a hull that still bore scars from the battle and a name that translated into a meaningless collection of sounds. Something that small wouldn't have the medical facilities Shepard would need to make the trip, and certainly wouldn't have been able to house those that had, to Liara's ever-present shame, refused to leave her side. Miranda and Karin, working so hard to save her life and repair her body. Ash and James and Javik, who stood guard at her bedside and outside her door in shifts, glowering at anyone who came near. Joker, who wouldn't let her go anywhere in a ship he wasn't piloting, and EDI, who wouldn't let her go in a ship she wasn't.

"Liara..?"

Aurelia's hand upon her arm, her concerned voice brought Liara back to herself. She touched a hand to her cheek, and wiped away the wetness she found there, trying to force her guilt and irrational disappointment to go along with it.

"Come on," she said, shaking off the other maiden's hand. "We have work to do."

She led the short way to the wall above the gate, noting how the expanding settlement was starting to encroach upon the fortifications again, and the clutter this entailed. Her inner archaeologist wondered if some lucky dig team, millennia in the future, wasn't going to have a field day trying to puzzle out the contradictions of this site. Her inner administrator noted that it was probably past time to push the walls out another bit further, or, perhaps, even to begin looking at taking back the parts of the city that still stood. And her inner commando quickly made note of available cover, idly checked the pistol at her hip and coolly evaluated what threat each of the five armed and armoured humans approaching the gate posed.

She immediately pegged two of Marines, one skinny male and one squat female, as veterans, their movements relaxed but alert; the third, another male, radiated nervousness, and discomfort with his full suit and sealed helmet. His nervousness was shared by one of the remaining two members of the landing party, two more females dressed in light combat shells over navy skin-suits rather than full body armour. The fifth and final member of the group, though, walked at its head, a slight and surprising spring in her step. She stopped the squad just before the gate and raised her hand in what, Liara had to quickly remind the other watchers on the wall, was a greeting, not a warning.

And then she called up to them, asking in polite but halting and oddly accented tones for entry, and Liara felt her face break into a smile, as best as it was able to.

"Sam!"

She vaulted over the parapet without a further thought, letting her biotics slow her fall just enough to take away the worst from the impact, and moments later was standing in front of the shorter human, who grinned up at her through a slightly foggy faceplate. Seconds after that, she was startled to be pulled into a brief but fierce embrace.

"Liara! It's so good to see you."

"And you too, Sam," Liara agreed as they parted. "And you too. What brings you to Thessia?"

"Admiral Hackett sent me. I come bearing gifts."

"Gifts?"

"Of the best kind," the human confirmed happily. "Really _expensive_ ones. Um..."

The last was directed over Liara's shoulder, even as the Marines behind Sam snapped into defensive stances, weapons coming up to the ready. Liara turned to see her own guard moving in to circle the smaller group, weapons hot, led by a furious-looking Aurelia.

"This… ah, this isn't exactly the welcome I expected, to be perfectly honest," Sam said warily, trying to follow the asari squad as it fanned out.

"And it is not the one you should receive. Stand down, please," she directed the commando squad, simultaneously waving for Aurelia to come up beside her. "Sam, this is Aurelia Vamos, the, um, captain of my guard." Goddess but it sounded so unnatural and narcissistic to say it aloud. "Aurelia, this is specialist - sorry," she noticed for the first time the changes to the uniform, the insignias of rank, "it's lieutenant now, isn't it? - Lieutenant Samantha Traynor. She was with us on the Normandy."

"Hooray for battlefield commissions, I suppose," Samantha Traynor said with a roll of her eyes. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

The hand she extended for a human-style handshake, however, went unmatched, she slowly dropped it back to her side.

"Charmed," Aurelia said icily, not taking her eyes off the Marines, even as they themselves began to lower their weapons. "My Lady, I beg the favour of a word with you in private."

In the awkward, tense silence that fell, Liara looked from her to the tense Marines, to the commandos surrounding the group, to Sam and then back up at the wall, where two more Huntresses had arrived and had weapons out and trained on the humans.

"Of course," she said eventually. "Griete, would you please see Lieutenant Traynor and her company safely to my office?"

The older commando holstered her rifle behind her back and stepped smartly forward.

"Yes, my Lady. If you would all follow me please."

Aurelia, to her credit, waited until the new arrivals were safely behind the gate and out of earshot, and even then kept her voice low enough not to be heard by those still standing watch atop the wall.

"What in the twelve stinking hells were you thinking!?" she hissed. "Are you trying to get yourself killed? You can't just _do_ things like that anymore! What if they were hostile?"

Liara blinked, taken a little aback by the fully revealed depth of her anger.

"Aurelia, Samantha is a friend of mine," she said placatingly. "And Commander Shepard's. We fought together during the war. I trust her with my life."

"That's wonderful and all, but what about the other four? Do you know those humans as well? Do you know if you can trust _them_?"

"Well, no-" she admitted.

"For all you knew, they could have been Cerberus, or Terra Firma, or mercs, or just nutjobs wanting to kill someone famous!"

"But I know Samantha. She-"

"-might have been bait! Or - what's the word? - indoctrinated! Did you consider that before you decided to run out to meet them? Any one of them could have shot you, or dropped a grenade, or-

"I appreciate and note your concern, Aurelia, but I can handle myself," she said, her tones clipped as her own anger started to rise. The young commando was good, and had the potential to become great with age if she stuck at her trade, but Liara would bet, thanks to Shepard and Garrus, Wrex and Ashley and even James Vega, that she was better, here and now. "I could certainly hold off five humans long enough for backup to arrive."

"Maybe, but you wouldn't have had time to put a barrier up if one of them had an explosives vest. Do you _want_ to lose your other eye? Because that could be the least of it!"

Liara couldn't stop her hand, this time, from flying to her face. Her own skin was dry and rough and dead, numb beneath her fingers. And, in her mind's eye, she saw the Mako again, heard the _whoomph_ from deep within its shattered remains, felt the sudden, incredible wash of heat and pressure. But it would all be ok, as long as Shepard-

Shepard had promised to come back to her. There would be bonding, and growing older and more comfortable together, and maybe even daughters of their own to teach and tease in equal parts. Shepard had promised it would be so, and Shepard's promises were the things on which the axes of the universe spun. And Liara, in turn, had made a promise of her own, one never spoken aloud but no less sincere:

She would always be waiting.

And she shouldn't ignore good advice just because she didn't like it.

Liara let her hand drop, the bright, unconscious flare of her biotics fading along with it. Aurelia was watching her with wide eyes, fear of more than one sort behind the anger there.

"What do you want of me?" she asked, as calm as the breathless moment before a thunderstorm.

"You made me your guard. I promised to be your shield and your spear, and to keep your secrets and your life," Aurelia said, and her voice was almost pleading as she echoed the words of her oath. "Let me _be_ your guard, and keep you safe. I can't do it if you won't let me."

And letting her, Liara knew from her youth and her mother's entourage, meant more than the occasional escort. It meant guards at locations hours before her visits, searching venues and vetting crowds. It meant itineraries and plans and escape drills. It meant a constant, wary shadow that smelled of leather and gun polish at her side, at her heels, a presence built an unspoken barrier between her and every person she would ever meet, another ocean between her and any chance of a normal, quiet life.

She had never wanted to be in that position again. Never a moment real peace. Never a second real privacy. Never an instant of true spontaneity. She had left her home, her mother, in large part to escape that kind of life. But for Shepard-

For Shepard, she could endure anything.

"You are right, of course," Liara sighed, and found a smile from the goddess only knew where. "I'm sorry. I am afraid that I am just not used to being the centre of attention like this. Not even five years ago I was fending for myself, alone at dig sites on forgotten planets. And on the Normandy, my work meant I kept to myself for much of the time. I will need some time to adjust."

She'd gone for days sometimes, particularly after the fall of Thessia, without seeing another person face to face. She would work until she fell asleep at her desk, waking hours later, stiff and sore, only to pick up exactly where she left off. She ate if she remembered, or if someone reminded her to. Shepard was better about that than she was - she joked about the ghost of her old 'gunny', whoever or whatever that was, coming back to haunt her - but only just.

They'd made a concerted effort to find time for each other during the opening phases of the war. They'd eat and talk and plan, and make love to decompress and wish the conflict away for a little while. By the end, however, when they'd found time for each other, they'd been more or less limited to sharing bland ration packs in various degrees of silence, then falling into bed, too tired to do anything more than lie together and spoon until duty or nightmares drew one or both from slumber once more.

"I understand that it's a big change for you," Aurelia said slowly, cautious in her seeming victory. "But it's a necessary one. I think we can trust the people that have been here from the start, and the krogan all seem to be too wary of Matriarch Aethyta to risk trying anything and they're leaving soon anyway, but we can't say the same of all of these strangers coming in. We've had more than fifty so far just today, and I caught some of those reporters trying to break into your ship this morning. Who knows what will show up tomorrow? We just can't afford to risk you. You're all that's holding us together."

The almost reverential way that she said the last two sentences made Liara feel oddly uneasy. The asari were a resilient people. Someone, or multiple someones, would rise up to do the job if she fell or stepped aside. They would just do it differently, perhaps more slowly, and without all of the facts she had at hand. Perhaps the old matriarchy might persist, but it would, at least, be some sort of an order. And it probably wouldn't persist anyway once the secrets Liara held were let out, and she would make certain, no matter what, that they were.

But there was more to her unease than that, and, as she looked into her guard's big, brown and decidedly worried eyes, she abruptly realised what it was. She'd seen that expression before, back on the original Normandy. In the mirror.

Oh no. Oh no no _no_. What had Benezia said about Aurelia, when recommending her for this very role? That anyone could see, just by looking, that she was devoted to her? Liara had thought it was just a bit of, dare she say, hero-worship, and had tried to dissuade it as gently as she could, encouraging the younger maiden to relate to her on a more personal level. Even if such adulation were not inherently uncomfortable, Aurelia would not be able to function effectively as her guard if she saw Liara as more than asari. But her efforts seemed to have backfired. Devotion indeed.

Great goddess, what did she do now? She could have dealt with flirting from the girl. Their people expected some such play and flattery in most social gatherings; it was, in a way few aliens understood, the grease on which the wheels of asari society turned. She'd learned to deal with it, and flirt herself, on Illium. She had even turned it into a science project, of sorts, bringing to mind all of the times she had watched her mother and her friends at those interminable, intolerable meetings and parties and other gatherings, using them to create rules of behaviour she could apply and refine. Flirting had never _meant_ anything to her at the time, and she hadn't cared then if it had mattered to anyone else. It was hard to care about hurting other people's feelings when you had none of your own.

But here, now, she did care about hurting Aurelia. She was sweet, and loyal, and had been through a great deal. And, besides, Liara had quickly discovered working as an intelligence broker that the most horrific, relentless vendettas arose when love was turned, for whatever reason, to hate. She could ill-afford to make another enemy, let alone make one of the asari who was supposed to guard her back.

Liara had a feeling that she already knew what Benezia would say if she when to her for advice on the matter. Traditionally you were supposed to take key members of your guard and your entourage to bed, at least once. It built rapport and trust, her mother had said by way of explanation, all those years ago, and bound them to you more tightly. It was another level of security, too, as it was hard to conceal your true feelings and intentions in a meld. Was Aurelia expecting that of her? The younger maiden was... nice, certainly, and even attractive in a lanky kind of way, but the idea left Liara feeling decidedly cold.

Aethyta, on the other hand... Actually, Aethyta would probably offer the same advice the same as Benezia, only rather more crudely and with accompanying hand gestures. So that was no good either. But there wasn't really anyone else she could ask.

What had Shepard done, back on the first Normandy, when it became painfully obvious that half of the ship was infatuated with her? She had been friendly to everyone and eminently approachable, but was still, somehow, unavailable at the same time. Until, quite abruptly, she'd become available to the reclusive, stammering, naive archaeologist who'd never been able bring herself to fantasise about anything more than kissing and hand-holding before. And when Kaidan had misread the signals, she'd dealt with him calmly but firmly, keeping their working relationship and friendship intact.

But Shepard was _Shepard_ , and so was deeply charismatic and generally wonderful with other people. Liara, on the other hand, applied the scientific method to basic social interactions like flirting. She had even, goddess help her, made charts.

"There are others who can step up," she countered after a too-long pause, turning and starting back for the gate to cover her sudden discomfort. "I'm sure that not _all_ of the matriarchs have their heads in the sand. Just most."

Another pause.

"Their... 'heads in the sand'..?"

"A human phrase, taken from the behaviour of a mythical bird. A phoenix, I think. It means something like, oh, pretending that something dangerous will not exist if you refuse to look at it. I've never been able to find a similar saying of our own."

"It's a good saying," Aurelia said non-committedly, falling into step.

They passed under the battlement and back into the camp, pausing to roll and lock the heavy steel panel serving as the gate back into position. They set out again in silence, coming to a halt only when they'd reached the grimy, brooding bulk of the freighter.

"I expect you to tell me if I have my 'head in the sand' Aurelia," Liara said, "much as you did today. And I will make more of an effort to consult with you about my movements and be less impulsive and otherwise let you hold to your oath to me. But I still expect you to respect my privacy when I ask you to, and to obey my orders when I give them to you. Am I understood?"

"Yes, my Lady," Aurelia replied, saluting just as stiffly.

"Good," Liara said, keying the airlock. "I am going to speak with Lieutenant Traynor in private. You may re-join your comrades for the time being, or help supervise the other humans if you wish," she added, nodding to the small group, led by Griete, that was vanishing deeper into the camp. "I will call for you when we are done."

"As you command."

Liara didn't wait to see which direction she set off in, or even if she did, but stepped into the airlock as soon as the door cycled open, breathing a sigh of relief when it closed behind her again. Goddess, it wasn't as if she didn't have enough problems already! What had her mother been thinking? Had she?

The airlock went through the full decontamination cycle before letting her back aboard, and, once inside, she realised that the ship's environmental systems were powered, air circulating briskly through the scrubbers. She found the cause of that, her visitor, examining the almost empty cargo hold with apparent interest, her bag and helmet carefully placed atop Liara's desk but her breathing mask unclipped from her belt and affixed firmly over nose and mouth.

"Sorry, the atmospheric eezo reading outside here's five parts per million and I couldn't wait to get out of this bloody helmet," Sam said by way of explanation, turning towards her. "I have no idea how Tali stands it."

"Quarian suits are better engineered," she replied, thinking back to the periods of downtime aboard the original Normandy when they'd had nothing better to do than 'shoot the breeze', as Shepard had called it – another strange human idiom, now that she thought about it. As they'd talked about their homes, their families and their people, Liara had been surprised to discover how much she and the rather more garrulous quarian had in common. "And they're more or less raised in them. I'm told that, after the first two or three years, it's not so much like having a second skin as having a stronger, thicker first one."

She stopped and gave the human woman a good once-over, noting that the dark shadows beneath her eyes, and the lines of stress and worry that had aged her face by decades over the closing weeks of the war had eased, though not disappeared completely.

"You're looking well. Peace suits you."

"And you. You're looking," the pause was noticeable, " _better_ than the last time I saw you."

"Considering I was barely conscious, half-naked and laid out on a surgical bed, I'm not sure that I can consider that much of an accomplishment."

She didn't remember much about those first few days, spent initially in an overcrowded field hospital, and then in the relative quiet of the Normandy, after someone had seen her laid out between the only three other asari in the facility and realised who she was. There had been pain and confusion, the latter not at all aided by the former, and, particularly, the various medications she'd been given for it.

Liara had hazy recollections of humans apologising for not being able to do more for her, of going into and out of surgeries, of waking up to hear Garrus arguing weakly with Karin. Faces, familiar and not, swam into and out of view in a strange world where every light had a halo and every sound was curiously sharp. Once, an asari, a matron with enough vanity to highlight her natural markings with tattoos, had been wrapping her arm in a new set of bandages soaked in something that smelled like bile. On another it had been Javik at her bedside, telling her that, if she died, she'd simply be proving what a useless, weak and primitive species the asari were. She had cursed and tried, unsuccessfully, to slap him, and taken his curiously approving grin back with her when she'd passed out, the right side of her body on fire again.

Sam, though, had been the one there when she'd woken up, truly, for the first time, with enough of her faculties intact to ask 'had they won?' and 'where was Shepard?', in that order. Sam had been the one with the answers, too, before Karin had stepped in with her tests and her drugs and her more clinical explanations, and her assurances that they were looking for an asari-compatible dermal regenerative unit. Liara hadn't processed much beyond the realisation that she was still alive, that Shepard was still alive, and that the Reapers were not. The mirror hadn't come until later.

"Well, the half-naked bit wasn't so bad."

"Do you often ogle half-naked asari?"

"Only when they're extra-crispy." The human paused and glanced up at the ceiling, as if in deep in thought. "No, wait, that's a lie. If you must know, I wasn't _entirely_ heartbroken when Admiral Hackett told me that my next assignment was to the planet of the hot, blue, alien not-women."

Sam dropped her head back down to meet Liara's eye with a smile and a wink, and Liara surprised herself by laughing, a short, sharp burst. She couldn't remember the last time that she'd laughed.

It had taken most of the war for Liara to warm to the human Specialist, and they had really only established something approaching friendship after the first couple of months had well and truly gone past. At first, Liara simply hadn't cared to get to know any of the new crew beyond the dossiers she'd carefully assembled on them. She'd had her work, which they could have no part in, and, if she ever felt the urge for some sort of social contact, there was Shepard, or, failing that, Garrus, Tali, Ashley and Karin or, if she was feeling particularly desperate, Joker. As a result, the crew had found their resident asari archaeologist cold, aloof, abrupt and secretive, treating her with grudging respect to her face and gossiping about her, in sometimes unpleasant terms, behind her back. Shepard had eventually found out and both put a stop to the gossip and forced Liara to engage more with the crew.

Liara hadn't really minded the gossip all that much. Fear kept people from asking questions that didn't need to be answered.

Specialist Samantha Traynor, though, had been actively nosy, pestering Liara whenever she stuck her head out into the mess or onto the bridge with persistent questions about what went on the supposed XO's office, with its unnaturally high data and power usage levels and ever-locked door. Liara had even caught her trying to infiltrate her network more than once, and the resulting silent arms race had proven costly in terms of time and credits. From then on, Liara had made a point of keeping an eye on the Specialist from a comfortable distance, which had, in turn, lead to twin, uncomfortable revelations. The first was that Specialist Samantha Traynor, with her sharp mind, esoteric interests, innocence of war and occasional tendency to – when had she started thinking in human idioms? - put her foot in her mouth, reminded her just a little too much of her younger self. The self Shepard had fallen in love with. The second was that she, Liara T'Soni, first and only daughter of Matriarch Benezia, had an unexpectedly strong jealous streak.

It was completely irrational, and, at the time she honestly hadn't been entirely certain as to where it had come from. It really, hadn't been all that long ago, after all, that she would have happily agreed to sharing Shepard with Kaidan Alenko, if it meant she got to be just a small part of the Commander's life and heart. And then again, later, before Shepard went through the Omega Relay; Liara heard all of the rumours swirling around about Shepard's possible involvement with half of her crew – how could she not? - and had steeled herself to wish her beloved well and wave her goodbye, because after two years spent immersing herself in the cesspit that was Nos Astra, Liara hadn't felt worthy of Shepard anymore, and had truly wanted her to be happy with _someone_. But the very thought of Specialist Samantha Traynor, the Oxford graduate and oral hygiene enthusiast with a ready smile and sinfully dark eyes, whiling away two evenings a week teaching Shepard how to play chess over a bottle of wine somehow tied Liara's stomach in knots and turned her hands into fists. It had taken every ounce of her willpower not to abuse her network to discredit the Specialist's expertise, somehow, or disgrace her publicly, or manufacture some sort of crisis involving her parents severe enough that Shepard would feel compelled to release her from service to go to them.

Shepard had been amused but... _disappointed_ in her. Disappointed in both of them, really, particularly after EDI, who was an insufferable and oftentimes inappropriate gossip, had informed her of their private espionage war. Shepard's disappointment had always impossible to bear, and so Doctor Liara T'Soni had found herself seated at the bar on the Port Observation Desk beside an equally uncomfortable Specialist Samantha Traynor with orders to 'kiss and make nice'. And they had. Made nice, that was, over several shots of some horrible drink called tequila, shared tales of past horrific embarrassments and a lengthy discussion about data compression algorithms. Sam - and it had become Sam very quickly - had eventually suggested that they enact the kissing part of the order, if only to get back at Shepard, but Liara had declined on the grounds that she would feel hypocritical. And also her suspicion that it might not have the desired punitive effect on her lover.

That particular suspicion had been confirmed later that night, when she'd found her drunken way up to Shepard's cabin to be confronted with a human whose eyes were a little _too_ amused and whose grin was a little _too_ innocent. Liara had ignored her questions with exaggerated care, walked her back towards and then onto her bed, shucking her methodically out of her uniform as she went. Then, straddling her naked thighs, she had attempted to smother her with a handy pillow.

Shepard had laughed so hard she'd cried, and when they'd eventually made love that night, it was full of the echoes of her amusement.

"So, what _does_ bring you to Thessia, aside from the view?" she asked, scooting around to her side of the desk. "I believe that you mentioned gifts."

"I did," Sam replied, drawing a datapad out of her bag before taking up her own seat. She held the device out to Liara, who took it, left-handed. "On behalf of the Systems Alliance, representing Earth and all of its associated colonies, settlements and outposts, I am duly authorised to extend the hand of friendship once more and offer the official re-opening of diplomatic relations between our peoples. If you're agreeable, we'd also like to begin negotiating a formal military and trade alliance."

Liara stared at her, uncomprehending for a moment, and then looked down at the datapad. It certainly looked legitimate, as she scrolled through. The text, repeated in several asari and human languages, was too flowery to have come from the Admiral himself but it was his signature and prints, voice and thumb attached to the bottom alongside the digital seals. The device itself was a one-time-use diplomatic pad. A few such pads had crossed her desk during her time as the Broker, and she'd even come into possession of one once while working on Illium; they were very difficult to forge or alter, but not impossible if you had the right connections.

"Provisionally, yes," she said, looking back up. "Very much yes. I'll have to read through it first, you understand and-"

'Put it to a vote', she almost said.

Really, by every law and custom their people possessed, something of this magnitude had to go to the people for debate and approval. The entire people. Who were scattered across hundreds of worlds and thousands of outposts, some still without any way of contacting the outside world. Who typically took part in debates via dispersed electronic forums moderated by extremely sophisticated VI constructs, all of which utilised the very same communication infrastructure that the Reapers set out to destroy from day one.

And then the debates themselves, for policy changes of this magnitude, took years to complete at the best of time. How many years had it taken to ask the turians to join the war against the Krogan Rebellions? Three, was it? Four? While they'd continued to lose ground to the unstoppable horde inch by inch and relay by relay? And then it had taken almost another decade of debate to agree to extend a seat on the Council to them for their efforts.

Forgiveness, not permission. A second mantra to live by.

And, later, a mantra to rot in prison by.

Well, at least if she did end up imprisoned or, more likely, if Samara or another Justicar executed her for treason, she could rest easy knowing that any agreements she'd illegally put her name to on behalf of her people would be more easily broken than made.

"-and," she continued more slowly, "run it past wiser and more experienced heads than mine. But I would hate to see everything we worked for during the war to fall apart now, in the peace. I do have to ask, though: why me? My sources indicate that the matriarchy on Cyone is still at least partially intact, and they worked very closely with Alliance forces during the war."

The first reports of the reaction to her... speech on Cyone had not been entirely promising. The fortress-planet had stood up to the worst the Reapers could throw at it and so the old order still held out.

Goddess, how quickly had she fallen into thinking of it as 'the old order'? Was she really that arrogant? But their mindset was clearly old: Cyone was accepting no refugees, and sending only limited aid.

"We've been dealing with your colonies on a world-by-world basis, but it's been an uphill struggle and there's a lot of duplication and wasted effort. We've been hoping for a while now that someone would step up and start trying to re-form some sort of central government that we can deal with directly. Admiral Hackett thinks you're the best bet we have of that. And… I probably shouldn't be saying this, but I think he respects you. Even if you say 'no', I'm still to give you the QEC."

Liara perked up a little more. She had a great deal of respect for Admiral Hackett herself, and to hear that he still thought well of her in turn gave her a surprisingly warm little glow. And a QEC, even one just linking her to the Alliance, would be invaluable. She'd gotten so used to having it, aboard the Normandy – instantaneous communications untraceable by the Reapers, even within certain limitations, was worth its weight in eezo.

"A QEC?"

"That really expensive present I mentioned," Sam said happily. "It's in the back of the Canberra over there with a portable fusion plant that's good for about another two years. I've got a week in total to get it set up and tied into your local coms before I've got to head back to Earth. Here, I'll send you the specs."

Seconds later, Liara was looking through the basic technical specifications for the QEC unit and the fusion plant. She was no Tali, but she thought she had some idea of what she should look for, and was looking at. The plant, she was certain, was nothing special - she'd used ones like it on half a dozen major dig sites - but it would be a welcome supplement to their current limited power supply, even if most of its output went to the QEC unit. The QEC itself, on the other hand, was pure top-of-the-line Alliance-military, much like the one on the Normandy. The previous Broker had acquired the plans for a similar, at some point, and had commissioned a number for use within the network; they were all useless now, unfortunately, with the central node on Hagalaz destroyed. Given the expense and difficulty of creating QEC units, the unit on offer had probably been salvaged from a damaged Alliance command ship or station.

"Expensive gifts indeed," she murmured, killing her omni-tool readout. "What does the Admiral want in return?"

"Just the chance to bend your ear, I think. We're proving units to the turians, the quarians and the krogan as well, and the salarians, if we can find someone to deal with. In another week you should be able to talk to them directly yourself. We only have enough units to give everyone one, so it will all have to be routed through our central hub. But we promise not to eavesdrop."

"Too much," Liara remarked dryly.

"Too much," Sam agreed, with a slightly devilish smile.

"How is Admiral Hackett doing, anyway?"

"Well enough, I think, but he complains that he's twice as busy now as he was during the war. 'When the shooting starts'" she continued, in a rather poor imitation of Hackett's gravely tones, "'people do what needs to be done, but the moment it stops, all they want to do is argue. They'll argue themselves right out of an airlock if they're not careful'."

Truer words were never spoken – at least when it came to her own people.

"It sounds as though you and the Admiral are getting along well."

"I think so. I'll admit that I was a bit nervous about working for the old man at first, but when you've worked with Commander Shepard, it's rather hard to be intimidated by anyone ever again, isn't it?"

"It is."

That was the very sentiment she had clung to on Illium, the one that had let her stare down information brokers five times her age, let her stand stock-still and relaxed in the face of a raging krogan ready to charge, let her antagonise the most dangerous man in the galaxy.

"He keeps threatening to promote me again. I don't think lieutenants are supposed to tell admirals to stick thing up their jumper, but I will if I have to."

Liara laughed again.

"You don't want another promotion?"

"I didn't want this one!" Sam groaned. "But he insisted that I needed a commission if I was going to be overseeing this sort of thing."

"You do deserve a commission, though, and probably more," Liara insisted. "You are exceptional at what you do. Without you, we would have lost the war."

The human woman changed colour slightly in a way that Liara knew signalled embarrassment, and waved her hand vaguely as if to ward off Liara's words. Since learning of it, Liara had always been vaguely thankful that asari lacked a similar such involuntary mechanism.

"You can say the same thing about two dozen people. Including you. Without you and your research on Mars, we wouldn't have had the Crucible."

"And without _you_ and your work on the Normandy, we wouldn't have known that the Catalyst was the Citadel," she countered pointedly. "So, I suppose that makes us _both_ 'big damn heroes', as Garrus would say."

"It's a big damn pain in the arse," Sam muttered. "I know I should be thankful. And, not all of the hero stuff is bad. A Star of Terra and a nice fat pension - I can handle that. But, you know, I never wanted command. That's why I went in as enlisted."

"I wanted to spend the next several hundred years quietly unearthing prothean ruins and writing the odd paper," said with a shrug. "We don't always get what we want."

"No," Sam sighed, and it was full of regret. "No we don't."


	22. Aethyta

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of these days I will master this whole 'regular updates' thing.

**Aethyta**

* * *

Aethyta took another slow pull from the flask and contemplated the datapad in her hands. The letter was brief, the words comprising it clumsy, and perhaps even terse, but they'd do, for now. Her girls knew better than to expect eloquence. That had always been the domain of their fathers. An astronomer, an architect, an entrepreneur and, if she was counting Benezia, a politician; they'd all had a way with words that she'd lacked. In her more self-aware moments, she'd sometimes wondered if, maybe, she needed someone like that, to balance her out.

She was debating adding anything about Benezia to the message when a flicker of movement over the top of the pad caught her eye. She ducked to the side just in time to watch the _rhevosi_ ball fly past her head and slam into the wall of the cargo container behind her. She winced at the clang, and felt her stomach churn again at the sudden movement, but fought it down with the aid of long practice. Instead, she slipped the flask back into the pocket of her jacket and, fighting another unwelcome bout of nausea, scooped up the ball as it rolled to a stop at her feet.

Her little group of wannabe fighters had grown to twelve capable of evading the matrons charged with minding them, dragging a number of younger sisters along for the ride. The littlest ones she'd safely occupied with some packing boxes she'd taken from stores at the same time she'd liberated the flask and current contents thereof; the older girls she'd introduced to _rhevosi_.

Like most asari sports, _rhevosi_ was fast-paced and biotically-dependant, and had a high injury rate as a result. Even unweighted, the ball alone could do serious damage to someone without barriers when backed by a decent throw, and an unlucky blow to the head or biotic detonation could kill. You still got it, sometimes, on the outlying colonies, but it had fallen out of favour in most of the Republics well before Aethyta had been born. It was in part due to the dangerous nature of the game, and in part because it was more competitive than it was cooperative, but rather more, Aethyta suspected, because their people were slowly forgetting how you were actually supposed to teach biotics: not in some sterile, controlled classroom, but through hard, lived-in experience. That, and the unruly scrums it tended to produce weren't half as spectacular to watch as a game of skyball.

Imilda, the girl with the hard grey eyes, was the first to reach her and the ball, breathless from running and flushed with exertion in the pale afternoon sun.

"Well, someone owes me a penalty," Aethyta said, holding out the ball. "Was it you?"

"You're supposed to be watching!" the girl complained, snatching it from her.

"You all know the rules. Shouldn't need me to police you."

"That's not the point."

"Gimme a break, kid. You're lucky I'm out here at all today," she said, with feeling.

The past few days were a blur, to the point that she wasn't entirely sure how many of them there had been. The only thing she _was_ sure about was that she hadn't had hangover this bad in at least a century.

She'd come around again sometime in the middle of this morning, and had made it to the side of the bed just in time to be sick into the rubbish bin some thoughtful soul - Benezia, she guessed - had left there for just that purpose. The bottles at her bedside were empty, and she couldn't find the energy to make it out of said bed any further than the ship's small head. But there had still been water, in the galley, a couple of pills she hadn't bothered to examine in any great detail before taking them, and then she'd been falling back into bed for more of what could charitably be called 'sleep'. When she'd come to for the second time, to be sick for the second time, she'd lain in bed wishing in vain for death for another hour before eventually finding the wherewithal to haul her extremely sorry ass out of bed and to the showers, to wash away the full-body stink of cheap booze, vomit and sour sweat.

When she'd emerged, blinking and cursing into another overcast and miserable day, it had been to find that the camp was buzzing like a gilfly hive on fire. She hadn't cared enough to investigate and nobody had paid her any mind when she'd stood under the shower head for a full half hour beyond her allotment, or even when she'd helped herself to two of their almost exhausted supply of ration packs. No one, that was, except for this little brat and her gang of bratty sidekicks, who'd turned up like magic, wanting to know why she hadn't been at their agreed upon meeting place for 'training' the past few days.

Aethyta had been on the verge of telling them to fuck off, but had reminded herself that a deal was a deal, and that they'd upheld their end of the bargain so far. And she'd figured that they might help her take her mind off of, maybe not the krogan wailing on her skull with a powerhammer, but the reason why she'd wound up in that state in the first place.

It hadn't really worked.

"If you're out, you're out, and you can sit down and shut up. If you're not, you can get your little purple ass back out there and send over whoever did put the ball out of bounds."

Imilda sent the ball hurting back to the playing oval with the hint of a biotic throw and decidedly poor grace, then dropped down on the crate beside Aethyta.

"You're _supposed_ to be teaching us _fighting_ ," she whined.

"And I am."

"But-"

"We made a deal, right? Trust me to hold up my end of it."

When the girl's scowl didn't ease, Aethyta sighed and rolled her eyes skyward.

"You see... whatsername... Jally over there?" Aethyta said, pointing at one of the youngest players. "She was pretty fuc- She wasn't all that great when we were trying out pulls the other day, was she?"

"She couldn't even move the stone," Imilda said, more than a hint of smug superiority colouring her tone. "Even Yirun could do that, and she's practically a baby."

"Yeah, well, watch her next time she gets the ball."

It took a few minutes, as Jally's team had lost possession, but eventually she came out of the scrum with the ball again. She glanced around for her teammates, spotted one behind her and sent the ball gently drifting up into the air above her head. The other girl put a clumsy throw into it, just enough to send it over the heads of the other team. It bounced off the edge of the box serving as a goal basket, to a collective groan from Jally's team, and was immediately set upon by players from the other two.

"Leaning things doesn't have to be serious business and hard work, you know," Aethyta said, as if she wasn't secretly hoping that the game would wear them all out enough today that they wouldn't bother her tomorrow - or ever again.

"Oh."

"And learning how to think on your feet and use the skills of the people around you is even _more_ important than knowing how to hit someone without hurting yourself. Games like this might be games, but they'll help you with that sorta thing too. The more you play, the more you learn."

"Oh."

"'Oh' is right. Now, be a good kid and go fill up my canteen, will ya?" she said, pulling the container in question out from between them. "And if you run into any of those humans I saw wandering around, see if you can't get a couple of 'em to come over here, and maybe I'll show you something new."

The girl gave her another scowl, but it had less heat and more resignation behind it and she snatched up the canteen and set off at a run towards the heart of the camp and the pumps. Aethyta watched her go until she vanished between two cargo containers, then fished the flask back out of her pocket. Another mouthful and it was empty, much to her disgust; batarian rum was usually a bit too sour for her tastes, but it was better than nothing.

She almost threw the empty flask away, but thought better of it at the last moment. It was a nice little thing, brushed aluminium and just the right size to carry on a person discretely. She slipped it back into her pocket instead, leaned back against her container's side, let her eyes fall closed, and tried not to think about all the times she'd played _rhevosi_ and other, old games with her daughters and granddaughters. With Zara, who'd always protested beforehand that she hated getting dirty and sweaty and smelly, but could, equally invariably, soon be found out there in the dust or mud or synthaturf with the rest of them, having a blast.

She must have dozed off, for a few minutes, with the datapad and her letter clasped to her chest, because she was started back to Thessia by another clang of a ball hitting the container. It was fucking embarrassing - nodding off in the middle of afternoon was something only babies and dried-up, decrepit old take-me-out-back-and-shoot-me matriarchs did. Her only saving grace was that no-one appeared to have noticed. Instead, she handed out another penalty and had another conversation with a too-serious child, this one afraid she was going to have to become a matron straight away when she grew up so she could take care of her little sister. Aethyta sent her back into the game a few minutes later, reassured and substantially better educated about asari biology. What the hell _were_ they teaching kids these days?

A third penalty and a third child followed not long after. This one who told the ground, the sky, the crate - anything but Aethyta, in fact - about her aunt, who'd kept her and her cousin safe for a week while she tried to find a way to get them out of the city, and who'd died at the hands of a marauder just inches from their hiding places. The cousin, who'd refused to come when she'd decided to run and was still missing.

It was obviously a 'Tell Aethyta Your Problems Day', like she got when she worked bars sometimes. Every new face a sob story looking for sympathy or advice, or just a semi-anonymous ear. Only here, the usual platitudes, measured dispensations of common sense, occasional knuckle sandwiches and pointed ' _grow a quad and talk to her/it/him'_ sprobably wouldn't help much. Much in the same way they hadn't worked with Benezia.

Goddess, if this was any indication, but the next generation was going to be royally fucked up. She could only hope that she wouldn't need to have these kinds of talks with her own grandkids.

If she ever got to see them again.

If they were all still alive.

Aethyta did her best, which she didn't think was all that great, to assure the girl that she wasn't a bad person for running, and that's what her family - all of her family - would have wanted her to do. But she was more than a little bit relieved when Imilda returned with a full canteen and a pack of five humans at her heels. Two females and three males, all in fatigues over skinsuits, rebreathers which covered their faces but that left their hair and sides of their heads exposed, which would do rather nicely for her purposes. There were groups of them wandering all through the camp, from some Alliance ship that had apparently landed while she'd been out of it.

She whistled the rest of the _rhevosi_ players back over and stood, a move that nearly cost her lunch and set her head spinning. She fought her way through it, though, planting her feet solidly on the ground and affixing her most winning smile on her face.

"Hey, thanks for coming over," Aethyta said, extending her hand for a human-style handshake to the one with a sergeant's stripes and a name badge reading 'Digeser'.

"It's my pleasure, Matriarch" Digeser said, accepting her hand cautiously. His grip was firm and steady, and she matched it exactly, watching the surprise in his brown eyes.

"Eh, don't bother with all of that 'matriarch' crap," she said, giving him a friendly slap on the shoulder before releasing his hand. "'name's Aethyta, and that'll do for me."

He smiled tentatively back at her in that toothy way humans did when they were trying to be friendly.

"I'm Sergeant Digeser, and this is my squad: Madoff, Pinelli, Duckworth and Ahmed." Each of the named soldiers nodded or held up a hand in greeting; evidently none of them had ever been through a basic cultural awareness course. Humans. "Our Captain has ordered us to help out where we can while we're dirtside. What can we do for you?"

"To tell the truth, Sergeant, I really just wanted the kids to have a chance to meet you, and maybe talk to you all a little bit," Aethyta said, waving vague in the direction of the sweaty, dirt-stained group. "I don't think half of them have seen a human in person before."

"Well, I don't think any of us have ever met an asari matriarch in person before."

His smile this time was more genuine and relaxed, and she matched it.

"Heh, well, you probably wouldn't have now, would you? We don't leave asari space much, and there aren't that many of us to begin with. I'm happy to answer any questions you've got, if you wanna stick around for a bit."

Digeser nodded to his squad, who checked weapon safeties before stepping over to the small group. Reaction from the children was mixed, some letting curiosity outweigh caution, others, the reverse, but soon the four privates and specialists were being swarmed over by small horde of chattering blue and purple children, poking at exposed skin, tugging at uniform, weapons and armor and asking questions in high-pitched voices.

"So, uh, if it's not rude of me to ask-"

She turned back to Digeser.

"Babe, believe me when I say it's damn near impossible to offend me. Whatdaya want to know?"

"How old are you, exactly? I've heard that asari can live for a thousand years."

"It's still 2186, right? So..." She did a quick bit of mental math, "a thousand and fourteen. I think. I kind of stopped paying attention when I hit a thousand."

"You're more than a thousand years old?" He whistled, low. "Jesus."

"Yeah. You're supposed to get an official letter for every decade past the big one-triple-oh, like it's some kind of special achievement or something, but I never saw one. Dad was a krogan who fought in the Rachni Wars. Mom was commando, fought in the Krogan Rebellions. Caused some problems in the end, as you can expect."

She could laugh about it, now, the stupidity of it all: at dad and his blasted honour, mom and her goddess-damned secrets and the both of them and their fucked up mutual destruction pact. It had taken centuries, but she could laugh about it now, and have a quiet drink to their memory on the anniversary of their bonding instead of going out and getting wasted the date of their deaths. Time, and a promise to herself that she'd never leave her own kids in the lurch like that. It was a promise, she knew, that's she'd ultimately failed to keep, with Liara, allowing the matriarchy to tie her hands and forbid formal contact if it meant keeping her safe from them.

With Zara.

Oblivious to her thoughts, Digeser shook his head in amazement, and she had to resist the urge to roll her eyes. A thousand years must seem like an eternity to a species that saw, if they were lucky, a hundred and fifty, but when she looked back on it, it seemed to have flown by. Only yesterday, it seemed, that she'd brought Zara home-

Sickness roiled in her gut that had nothing to do with alcohol.

"I can't imagine living that long."

"It's got its ups and downs, like anything else. On one hand, you meet a lot of interesting people. On the other, you get to watch 'em all die. And you get to see a lotta war."

"Anything like this?"

They surveyed the camp in silence for a moment, and the ruined spires of the city visible over the walls.

"No. And I don't think you'd find anything like this in our whole history. We don't fight wars this way."

"We've never really seen anything like it either. Earth, I mean. We've had some really big and nasty internal wars, but we've never tried to make entire planets uninhabitable."

The two of them watched as one of the female soldiers laughed and knelt down to let a couple of the girls touch her hair, while another, a male, handed out what looked to be pieces of brightly-coloured candy.

Her nails dug hard into her palms.

"You got family, Sergeant?"

"Some. My parents split up when I was a little kid. Dad died when the Reapers hit the colony on Demeter," he said with a shrug, as if the news mattered little to him. "My mom, my step-dad and my half-sister were doing colony prep-work out in the Matano system. Wasn't worth the Reaper's time so they just kind of sat out everything. Took in some refugees. And then, you know, cousins and stuff, I guess."

"Got somebody special?"

"Hasn't really been time. The war kicked off not long after I go out of boot, and after that I was too busy fighting to worry about stuff like that. I think I'd like to settle down somewhere now, though, when I get out. Find a girl. Have a family."

They'd need a baby boom, in the long run, her people. At least if they were going to hold on to half of their colony worlds. And, from what she'd seen so far, there was a good chance they'd get one. A lot of, if not romance, then sex happening about the place.

Were they going have a generation maidens who decided to make the change young? Give it a decade and they'd probably have built things back up enough to supply the necessary hormonal triggers. Would her own youngest be one of them, if they did? The way Liara had talked about Shepard, sometimes, in the early stages of the war, had made Aethyta wonder if she wasn't going to do something that stupid, even then. Liara was way too young to even be thinking about kids. But then, Liara was also way too young to be doing the work she was doing.

"You know, there's gotta be at least two dozen matrons in the market for a cute young thing like you, " she said, looking him over from top to tail, "and more maidens dying for a good fuck than you can shake a stick at if you just want to blow off some steam. Play your cards right, and I'm sure you can get one of 'em to pop your heatsink. Maybe more than one. We're a sharing kind of species," she added with a wink, and laughed when he caught her meaning and coloured.

"I, uh-" He cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably. "I don't mean to sound rude, but, um, asari aren't really my, uh, thing."

"Humans aren't really mine either, to be honest," she shrugged. "Close, but not close enough, if you get my drift, and the hair thing's a bit of a turn-off. Never into quarians that much either, now that I think about it."

"They have hair?" He paused and blinked. "You've seen a quarian? Without a suit?"

"And you haven't? There's a little thing called _Fleet and Flotilla_ you know. It's pretty tame for the most part, but it did kick off that series of porno spoofs – what were they called? _Fleet and Fellatio_ or something just as stupid. Had some pretty hot turian-on-quarian action, though, if you're into that kinda thing."

Digeser's eyes bugged out, and he blushed so hard his ears turned red. Aethyta rolled her eyes. Humans. For a species that had given the galaxy fifteen separate editions of Fornax, its individual members could be incredibly prudish.

"But, anyway, kid, I've gotta admit that I had kind of an ulterior motive for calling you over here. Would and your squad be up for a quick little self-defence lesson? I've been teaching the kids a thing or two today, to make 'em feel a little bit safer and all that. Most don't have any family left to look out for 'em."

"I don't see why not," he replied, visibly relieved by the change of topic. "What would we need to do?"

"Oh, nothing, really, except stand there. One male and one female'd do. It'd probably be less of a defence lesson and more of a, well, anatomy lesson."

A couple of minutes and a quick couple of conversations later, and she had two willing subjects. She started with the female, Pinelli, as she stood at ease before the group.

"So," Aethyta began, addressing her students, jostling each other for a good view, "humans, like all of the other species except the hanar, have two sexes, and they're made up a bit differently, so you have to think about dealing with 'em in different ways. The good news is that the females are a lot like us, for the most part. They've got most of the same vulnerabilities as we do. You remember what they are?"

She got a chorus of replies on the themes of 'instep', 'eyes' and 'knees', and nodded approvingly until her hangover made itself known again, and she had to close her eyes to make the world stop spinning.

"Pretty much. Eyes and nose are always a good bet, and any joints you can reach."

"What about the ears?" Imilda asked, staring at the woman with a disconcerting intensity. "They kind of stick out a bit."

"It hurts, but not as much as you'd think," Pinelli herself replied, grabbing her ears and twisting them around in what looked like an eye-watering fashion. "It's mainly cartilage and not a lot of nerves. We even put holes through them, sometimes, and wear jewellery," she added, to a new chorus, this one comprised entirely of 'ews'. "You're better off going for the eyes."

"What about your hair?" another girl asked.

"It hurts a bit when you pull on it, but that's part of the reason why a lot of us keep it too short to get a grip on."

"And if you pull too hard, it comes out," Duckworth, the other volunteer, chimed in, reaching up and yanking a couple of short strands out. His proclamation and action was met with another chorus of childish disgust, which set the rest of his squad to laughing.

It went on in that vein for a while with Pinelli, before they turned their attention to Duckworth, who bore the questions, scrutiny and even the occasional poke with equal good humour.

"The big difference, though," Aethyta said, finishing up her comparative anatomy lesson, "is that humans males have their primarily genitals on the outside, like the krogan and batarian males do. It makes 'em all vulnerable in pretty much the same way. A kick, punch, or a knee to the crotch can pretty much lay one out for a few minutes if you do it right. But it's not as far back on humans as it is on krogan. Here, I'll show you."

Duckworth's eyes widened at her words, and he dropped into a protective crouch as she moved into position.

"Aethyta, wait-" Digeser said urgently, starting forward.

"'course, half the time just the threat's enough," she conceded, stepping away with a grin and a wink towards the sergeant, before turning back to her class. "And I think that's enough for today anyway. Go on and hit the showers, and then get some chow. And don't go practicing all this stuff on any humans without their permission!"

The last was delivered at a shout towards a dozen rapidly retreating backs. Another round of handshakes and 'thank you's got rid of the humans, who wandered off, chattering and laughing, in the direction of their ship. That left Aethyta blessedly alone, with only her resurgent hangover for company. She sat heavily back down on the crate, tilted her head up towards the sky and closed her eyes. It was, for a lovely moment, almost peaceful.

A lovely moment, but not a long one.

"Matriarch? Matriarch Aethyta, isn't it?"

Fuck her life.

She cracked an eye open to glare at the intruder. A matron with spiralling white tattoos that were probably meant to make her look older and made her nose look pinched instead smiled down at her.

"Maybe. Who wants to know?"

"Cearra Ce'Molla, Republics Galactic Journal. Would you be able to answer some questions for our viewers?"

Aethyta opened her other eye and focused properly on the matron standing in front of her. Teal skin beneath those stupid tattoos, threatening to drown out what would otherwise be some quite nice natural blue markings. Nice shoes. Good but muddy pants, dress shirt and jacket, much cleaner. No belt. Full gloves, omni on her left wrist, datapad in the same hand. Unarmed - unless you counted the camera hovering over her shoulder.

A reporter. Great. Just... great. Exactly what she needed on a day like today.

"No," she said, closing her eyes.

There was a pause but not, to Aethyta's complete lack of surprise, the sound of retreating feet.

Human reporters were by far the worst of the breed – nosy, impatient, and zero respect for privacy. The turian and batarian presses were state-run propaganda machines more than anything else, and the salarians, by and large, gossiped way too much to need to pay people to find and publish news. The hanar, meanwhile, were too polite to really get anywhere half the time, the drell didn't really care about galatic events while the even the most doggest volus could usually be bought off. The elcor, well… OK, so maybe the humans weren't the worst, but they were a close second.

Asari reporters, though, were _patient_. They'd quietly dig and dig and dig in the background, picking at you and waiting and watching until they finally found something they could nail you with, and nail you with hard.

"Matriarch," a pause, an audible sniff. "Matriarch, have you been drinking?"

"Look, just fuck off, will you? I'm not in the mood for games."

"Speaking of games, what was that the children were playing earlier? It looked a great deal like _rhevosi_ , but I thought that had been banned on Thessia for anyone under one hundred. Teaching children a dangerous game? _While_ under the influence?" The matron _tisk_ 'd. "I wonder, where _did_ you get the alcohol from?"

Gritting her teeth, Aethyta refused to bite.

"As far as I'm aware, liquor is being kept under strict lock and key by the quartermasters. Did you bring it with you? Or did you come to some sort of an 'agreement' with one of the stockists?"

A pause, just long enough to get Aethyta's hopes up, only to dash them again, just as quickly.

"And what was that with the humans. It looked like you were attacking one of them. Are you aware that the humans are our allies?"

Athame's ass. She really wasn't going to leave it alone, was she? Aethyta opened her eyes and affixed the reporter with her most withering stare. It had centuries of practice and the full force of her hangover behind it, and it could usually clear a bar or bring a pack of vorcha to heel. It did not, unfortunately, have the usual effect: Ce'Molla took only a single step backwards before rallying herself and squaring her shoulders.

"What we had just then," Aethyta began in her patented 'talking to people too dumb to live' voice, "was a was a practical examination and in-depth analysis of some of our older traditions, followed by a self-defence lesson that the members of Sergeant Digeser's squad happily volunteered for. Ask 'em yourself if you want to. You're never too young to learn the basics of self-defence against any species.

"Now, what _do_ you want?"

The matron's smile took on a hungry edge that immediately made Aethyta uncomfortable. Still, she was unprepared for the question when it came:

"What is the exact nature of your relationship with Matriarch Benezia?"

She responded instinctively, the shock flowing through her skin like she'd been doused in ice water.

"It's none of your goddess-damned business is what it is."

Shit. Could she have said anything that sounded more defensive? Her sinking feeling was quickly justified when Ce'Molla smile broadened in a decidedly predatory manner.

"My sources say that you, Aethyta Argyris, are, in fact, Benezia T'Soni's former bondmate, and the father of Doctor Liara T'Soni, one of the so-called heroes of the Reaper War."

Shit.

She kept her mouth shut this time. Hell, she should never have opened it to begin with. Still the 'so-called heroes' jibe grated. Liara'd done more to end the war than anyone.

"Other Armali residents have commented that you spend a great deal of time in Matriach Benezia's company, and that the two of you share sleeping quarters."

Her hands balled themselves into fists again, but she remained silent.

"Are you renewing your bond? After all this time? There was always a bit of speculation as to who Benezia's bondmate was." She paused and sniffed. "If it was you, I can understand why it was kept so quiet."

That bit too, deeper than it should have. She thought she'd understood, at the time, what it meant for the two of them to keep things quiet. Benezia's career had been at a delicate point back then, and bonding to another asari, let alone one from the lower decks with no name, no money and a dirty past could have scuttled it. But it started hurting, somewhere along the line, that Nezzy wouldn't talk about her except to close friends, couldn't be seen in some places with her.

When Aethyta remained silent, the matron stepped forward, close, too close to her, her camera moving in with her for a better shot.

"Were you part of the conspiracy to hide her survival?"

She was trapped, her back literally up against a wall. The only way out would be forward.

"I was as surprised as anyone to find out that she was alive," she said through gritted teeth. "You want details on the 'conspiracy'," she raised her hands to form the quotation marks of human punctuation, popularised in recent times by Councillor Sparatus to indicate sarcasm, "talk to Commander Shepard. Was her idea, 'far as I can tell."

"And why do you think the Commander hid the survival of a known traitor and murderer instead of bringing her in for justice?"

Her head was pounding in time with her pulse, quicker by the second.

"Benezia's not a killer. And she's no traitor either."

"There is irrefutable evidence that Benezia T'Soni was working with the disgraced turian Spectre Saren Arterius to help bring back the Reapers. She helped plan attacks on human colonies that cost thousands of lives, to say nothing of the attack on the Citadel in 2183 and all of the lives that have been lost since this war began."

Her fisted hands clenched, hard enough that her nails cut into her palms.

"Yeah, but it wasn't her fault." Either the matron was fucking dense or she was out to cause trouble. "She was indoctrinated."

"Indoctrination? Reaper 'mind control'? Forgive me if I find that all to be a little far-fetched. It seems far more likely that Commander Shepard didn't want to be responsible for the death of her supposed lover's mother?"

Anger was an old, old friend, hot, liberating, soothing away the aches of her body.

"Athame's ass!" she snarled. "Didn't you read anything High Command put out during the war? It's a real. Fucking, Thing. It got in people's heads and made them do things they'd never want to do."

"Real or not you have to admit that it's a remarkably convenient explanation," the matron persisted, smiling that damn smile. "'The Reapers made me do it'. Should we use that as an excuse for every atrocity committed before and during the war?"

Aethyta found that she'd gotten to her feet at some point during the conversation, her fists still clenched hard at her sides. Purple was starting to creep into the edges of her vision.

"No," she said, her voice icy with barely restrained anger, "just for the ones where it's true."

"And how do we know which ones are true? Take Matriarch Benezia. Right now, all we have to go on that she's innocent is the word of her daughter, and you - her former lover. Both of you can hardly be called objective. And by all accounts she'd shown little contrition-"

The punch was simple but sweet, just raw muscle power backed by tendon and bone, but it was enough to drive the breath from the matron's lungs in a single explosion of air. Diaphragm. Damn, she'd forgotten to show the kids about that one.

Aethyta leaned in close to the reporter's ear as she doubled over, panting and wheezing and struggling to regain her breath.

"I don't know what the hell your agenda is, babe, and I don't really care. But if you come within five feet of me again, you're gonna find my boot so far up your ass that you'll be licking leather. And," she added, letting her voice fall further still, into a menacing purr that was almost seductive, "if I find out that you've tried spinning facts to turn this whole thing into a beat-up on Benezia T'Soni, _your feet won't fucking touch the ground_. No contrition? What happened before the war's been tearing her to damn pieces. It's bad enough she has to deal with that without your brand of varrenshit on top of it all."

Aethyta didn't ask for confirmation that the matron had understood her, and she didn't look for it either before landing her second blow, a neat and equally satisfying hook that laid the reporter out cold and sent her, spinning, to land on her side in the mud. Aethyta stared down at her for a long moment, trying to get her breathing - and her temper - back under control. It was only after she'd bent to make sure that she hadn't done any permanent damage to the reporter and saw the shadow falling over them both that she remembered the camera.

" _Fuck_."

* * *

It wasn't long after sunset that Aethyta, in a properly foul mood, returned to their little cabin on the freighter.

She'd wiped the camera clean and smashed it for good measure – _goddess_ but that had been satisfying - but it had turned out that the blasted matron had the equipment - and the sense - to live-stream copies of her footage to a backup site in Cianna. Given time and the right tools she might've been able to break into it to remotely wipe the drives clean of anything incriminating, but there was a distinct lack of both at the moment.

Fucking reporters.

She'd gone to the dining hall after that failed attempt, in search of something, preferably greasy, to line her stomach with before she found something else, preferably at least 90% proof, capable of returning her to blessed insensibility for a while. Instead she'd found the hall full of matrons arguing heatedly - and, more to the point, loudly - about something the kid had done or said or not said or something the other day. She'd turned on her heel and walked back out not even five seconds after first setting foot inside.

Her second attempt to find food, hitting the storehouses directly, had proven just as much of a bust. Not only were the containers locked up tighter than a volus' ass against the coming night, but there were too many people around to risk breaking in. It was one thing to take two ration packs from the mess when you'd missed breakfast, or to bribe a clerk for a couple of bottles of shitty rum, but just the other day someone had been caught stealing from stores after dark. She'd been lucky too - a month of shunning instead of outright exile. Luckier still that it'd been a storekeeper and not the fucking Justicar that'd caught her, or she'd probably be out on her ass _and_ missing a hand.

Tired, hungry, hung-over and increasingly, depressingly sober, she'd remembered her secret for-really- _serious_ -emergencies emergency bottle of ryncol. It tasted horrible and felt worse, but half a bottle was enough to put even her under, especially on an empty stomach. Only her secret hiding place evidentially wasn't all that secret as it turned out, because all that remained in it was a note from the kid apologising for giving the bottle to her pet Urdnot. The passive-aggressive little post-script about the damage the drink did to asari livers wasn't _quite_ the final straw, though it was close.

The final straw, in fact, was finding that the thieving, conniving little whelp wasn't even on board to receive the piece of mind Aethyta had begun preparing for her from the moment she'd pulled out a note and not a bottle. She'd stood there, before the dark, looming monitors in the silent cargo bay, fists clenched and biotics flaring, wanting to scream or shout or smash something or someone. But what good would it do? Smashing up the monitors and terminals wasn't going to bring her daughter back. She could drink until she blacked out again, but the world was still going to be there, waiting for her, when she woke up. Finding a fight, a good barroom brawl against some really hard bastards might get her blood pumping a bit but it wouldn't change anything for the people she'd failed. Sure as hell wouldn't fix the promises she'd broken. Zara. Mel and Khy and the grandkids. Liara. Even Benezia-

Fuck.

The sickness from the morning came back, in full force as the memory did, roiling in her gut, burning in her lungs. She'd managed to avoid thinking about that all damn day. Advancing on her. Shaking her until she could see the whites of her eyes. Going to hit her. She'd always been a bit rough, sure, because they both had a taste for it, but there were limits, boundaries they'd agreed on. She'd never – only scum laid their hands on someone they loved in anger.

And, goddess, now she had to remember kissing her, too, kissing her as if that could somehow make what she'd done better in any way at all. Make everything like it used to be. And admitting, in that moment, to herself, if no-one else, that she still loved Benezia T'Soni, somewhere deep down in the crooked depths of her soul. Loved her enough to want to fix whatever was broken in her. Maybe even loved her enough to forgive her for breaking her damn heart. If Nezzy'd want to have anything to do with her at all after the other night.

 _Fuck._  
  
Benezia was mercifully already abed and asleep when Aethyta slipped into the cabin; abed, but in the cot by the door rather than the more permanent fixture that dominated the tiny compartment. Aethyta stopped just inside the doorway to watch her for a long moment, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom. Benezia used to, well, not _sprawl_ , exactly, because you just didn't use a word like that when describing someone like Benezia, but she'd always take up as much space as she could in their bed. Aethyta'd woken more than once to find herself balancing precariously on the very edge, her blankets and pillows stolen in the night.

Tonight Benezia was curled up tight upon the cot, buried so far beneath the blankets that only the top of her head and crests were really visible. Her brows were drawn in a frown, but her breathing was slow and steady, which Aethyta hoped meant that she was getting some proper sleep for once. Too often of late she just seemed to lie there, dead-eyed and staring, drifting off for a few minutes only to snap awake again.

She caught herself just as she began to reach out, down towards Benezia to do... Well, she wasn't exactly sure what she wanted to do, try to ease the frown away or feel the texture of her skin again or _something_. Wasn't it bad enough that she was standing here and staring at her like some sort of pathetic stalker with a doomed crush?

She let her hand drop back to her side and edged carefully around the cot towards the bed. Her nose wrinkled involuntarily as the smell of dirty linen and sour sweat hit her, and she quickly realised why Benezia had opted for the cot, for all that it was the smaller and considerably less comfortable of the two options. But it wasn't as if Aethyta hadn't slept in worse places over the course of her life. Far worse places.

She stripped off boots and shucked off clothes as quietly as she could manage and climbed into the bed, burrowing beneath the blankets, trying and failing to get comfortable on the human-style furniture.

Aethyta had always prided herself on her ability to sleep anywhere, anytime, during anything. It was a skill she'd picked up during her merc days, one that had served her well over the course of her life. But tonight, for whatever reason, she could just not settle down, even when she found a position that didn't make her neck ache. Her scalp itched. When she relieved that particular discomfort, it transferred itself to her nose, then her leg. Her crests wouldn't sit right against the human-style pillows, which had no allowance for such things, even when laying on her side. Her head pounded. Her mouth was dry with thirst, and her stomach periodically decided to remind her of the dinner she'd missed. And her heart ached, too, a weight on her chest and sickness in her gut every time her thoughts returned to her family.

You could build up a lot of regrets over a thousand years.

She was rolling over onto her stomach for the umpteenth time, trying to remember that meditation technique Admiral Kessol, the stiff-necked old tart, had taught her, when she heard the rustle of blankets from the direction of the cot. Seconds later, Benezia began to speak, her voice whisper-soft and urgent, almost pleading in tone. It was all but gibberish, Aethyta realised, even as she sat up in her own bed, straining to hear. She could follow a bit of it, here and there, if she really tried - something about geth and codes and danger - but the bursts of coherence were brief and often contradictory, as if she were arguing with herself.

It couldn't have lasted more than a minute, all told, if that. Then came a sharp intake of breath, followed by the long, slow exhalation of someone realising that what had just come before had been a dream - but who wasn't entirely reassured by the fact.

"Nezzy?" she hazarded after a long, silent minute.

"A dream."

The reply was soft but instant.

"Yeah, I gathered that."

"I'm sorry. I did not mean to wake you."

Aethyta shrugged, unseen in the darkness, and allowed herself to settle back down against the pillows.

"Don't worry about it. I wasn't exactly sleeping."

There was another rustle of blankets, and another slow, measured, exhalation, and then a third. Aethyta could practically see Benezia, in her mind's eye, forcing herself to relax, inch by inch, the way she would after particularly stressful or frustrating day at or on the Forum, or in council, or even after a particularly heated argument with Aethyta. When Aethyta's own temper had cooled enough to go looking for her then-bondmate, she'd usually find Benezia meditating out in her favourite garden, weather permitting, or in the quiet of the household shrine if not.

Benezia hadn't really meditated at all, since coming back, had she? She hadn't made any devotions either, now that Aethyta thought about it. Ok, so Nezzy, for all her reputation and prominence in that arena, had always been remarkably restrained in her faith, quietly letting it inform her life without trying to win converts, but she had always been devout. It came out in little ways, day to day and month to month. A morning's prayer. An evening's meditation. Paper lanterns, covered in elaborate, exquisite calligraphy. Scented, sacred oils after bathing, aromas that Aethyta had never been able to associate with anyone but her since. The odd piece of jewellery and the cut and choice of some of her clothes. Feast days and fasting. Tending the gardens. Teaching. Song. Charity.

Even if you made allowances for the shitty circumstances they'd found themselves in, there should have been _something_ of that. What did it mean if there wasn't any?

"How... How are you feeling?"

Benezia's hesitant voice cut through her thoughts like an amorous elcor on a dancefloor.

"I think that's supposed to be my line," she managed.

"You have asked it often enough of late. Am I not allowed to worry about you as well?"

Was she allowed? Benezia hadn't worried about her at all, this past century. If she had, she'd've done more than send the occasional vid of their kid.

The thought arose instantly at Benezia's words, but Aethyta just couldn't find any anger to go with it. Maybe she'd used it all up last night. Maybe there was something to forgiveness. Or, at least, acceptance.

She'd evidently been silent for too long, because Benezia was speaking again.

"I am... so sorry about Zara. Truly."

"Yeah, well, me too. But I guess I got off light compared to most. I still have Mel and Khy... and Liara. They're still counting heads, but most of the grandkids seem to have come out ok too."

"Still, I imagine it does little to soothe the loss."

"No. It doesn't."

She felt the damned tears pricking at her eyes again, and cast about desperately for a new topic of conversation. Unfortunately, her net didn't fall very far away.

"Look, about the other night- I'm sorry."

"It is alright."

"No, it's not 'alright'. I tried to _hurt_ you," she insisted, and felt a fresh surge of shame at the memory. "That wasn't right, no matter how you try to spin it."

"It is _forgiven_ , then."

"But-"

"What took place was not _right_ , Aethyta, no, but you were _in extremis_. I don't believe that you could have changed so much in these past hundred years that a repeat would be likely. With that in my heart, I wish now that you take my forgiveness for what it is: sincere."

Benezia's voice was soft and gentle but insistent. It didn't really make her feel a great deal better.

"And, um, what came after?" Aethyta wet her lips in unconscious recollection. "The, uh, kiss-?"

There was a short, uncomfortable pause.

"In times of stress and turmoil," Benezia began, with that note of caution in her voice that meant she was trying to convince herself of something along with her audience, "we seek comfort in the familiar. There is no shame in it. You know this as well as I."

"Yeah," Aethtya sighed.

It was true enough, in its way. When things went to shit, you turned to the things - and the people - that'd served you well in the past. Failing that, you found a bottle and whatever arms were willing to hold you for a night or two. Hell, the bender she'd gone on when Benezia had left her-

"Nezzy?"

"Yes?"

"Why'd you leave me?"

The words were out of her before she could rethink or second-guess them, and hung heavy in the dark, still air. There was a long, drawn-out moment of near-silence, the room filled only with the sounds of their breathing and the slight rustle of blankets. It dragged on for so long that Aethyta began to wonder if she would actually get an answer, or if Benezia would feign sleep until the real thing came for them both. The whispered reply, therefore, took her almost by surprise.

"Why did you let me go?"

"Let you go?" Aethyta repeated at the ceiling dully, and then more heatedly, as some of the old anger, the old hurt returned. "Let you _go_? That's what it was, some kind of varrenshit _test_? And I _failed_ it?"

"No! Goddess, no!"

Aethyta could hear Benezia sitting up quickly in the cot, but closed her own eyes rather than sit up herself to face her.

"I meant that- Goddess, I didn't phrase that very well at all, did I?"

"I'll say," she groused, forcing the anger back down again. It was easier, somehow, not having to look at her. And Benezia _sounded_ genuinely upset by the notion. "So, what was it then?"

The cot creaked as Benezia lowered herself back down onto it with a sigh, and was silent again for a while.

"It was the right decision at the time," she said eventually, slowly, carefully. "I was not happy and, neither were you. Not truly."

"I knew you'd been unhappy," Aethyta replied, equally carefully. And she had known. It'd been hard to miss, really, toward the end. "But, you know, I thought back then that it was just stress and hormones. Hormones can be a real bitch."

"As I discovered, to my detriment." Eyes closed, Aethyta could imagine her smile, wry and fleeting. "True, that was a part of it. But..." Another sigh. "Why do _you_ think I left as I did?"

"Honestly?"

Aethyta found herself staring at the ceiling once more, remembering all the times she'd asked herself something very similar to that question. They'd fought a lot; that was true enough. They'd argue, the two of them, about whatever came to mind, Aethyta often taking a deliberately antagonistic stance because Benezia enjoyed being challenged and because Aethyta had always found getting the typically even-tempered Nezzy all riled up to be one hell of a turn-on. And so they'd end up in bed, or something close to it, each trying to reduce the other to a shuddering mess as quickly as possible so they could get the last word in and claim victory. It was usually a close thing: Aethyta had more experience but Benezia had better focus, and they were both more stubborn than Ishahi herself when they wanted to be.

But then they'd fight about something personal, and that'd end the same way too, only without the laughter. Closer to fucking than making love, sometimes. And then, after Benezia had fallen pregnant, even that had stopped. Things started to… _fester_.

The actual final straw, she'd thought, had been less than a month before Aethyta had come home to an empty house. She'd spent another frustrating day trying, unsuccessfully, to shout some sense into the hidebound idiots that supposedly kept the wheels of their 'great democracy' turning. It had been a bad enough day that she'd ended up trying to knock some damn sense into one of them too, in the literal sense. She'd stormed home early, wanting to do nothing more than have a stiff drink and a good vent to a sympathetic ear.

And that had been the other pattern, hadn't it? She'd go out and try to make a difference, and run headlong into a wall of stupidity and wilful blindness that infuriated her, sometimes past the point of reason. She'd lose her temper with someone, give them a piece of her mind or a meeting with her fists, and come home to Benezia. Nezzy would be sympathetic, counselling patience while she made a few calls to soothe some bruised egos and head off lawsuits over busted heads. And then, months or years later, when the fuss had died down, she'd put whatever point Aethyta'd been trying to make through that big brain of hers and spit out some beautiful piece of oratory that'd win everyone around to their side, and present that to Aethyta as a victory.

And it was a victory, of a sort.

And Aethyta had been thankful for it.

More or less.

And Benezia had never minded the time she spent holding hands and offering platitudes and paying legal bills.

Right up until the point that she had.

That afternoon, she'd found the drink, but not the ear she was after. When she'd entered their suite, it had been to find her bondmate lying on a divan out on the balcony, one graceful hand resting protectively over her belly, the other holding a datapad loosely to her side. Benezia had just _looked_ at her, looked over at her the way you looked at pet pyjak that had been cute once but was now crapping on the carpets and stealing your jewellery and making you wonder why you'd bought it in the first damn place. Then she'd raised her datapad and said around it, as mildly as you please, that she would see what she could do about the assault charges, that Kaina would expect an apology, and that she'd had one of the guest rooms made up. Aethyta had been so taken aback at that final decree and Benezia's uncharacteristic coldness that she hadn't even thought to argue about it until it was too late. And so, for the first time in over a century, they'd spent a night under the same roof in separate beds.

The next day, Nezzy had been deeply apologetic, blaming fatigue and illness and other bad news, and promised to make it up to her. The day after that, they'd had a blazing row over something so stupidly inconsequential that Aethyta couldn't even remember how it had gotten started.

Two weeks after that, Benezia had been gone.

It was only years later that Aethyta had found out, completely by accident, that Benezia'd been carefully courting Kaina for almost a decade up until that point, wanting her support for a series of healthcare reforms she was planning on introducing when the time was right. It was support that she'd ultimately never gotten.

"In the end I figured it was political," she sighed. "You always had big ambitions, Nezzy. Bigger than mine. Hell, bigger than most. And you had the brains and the sheer bloody-minded stubbornness to achieve them. I was holding you back."

And it hadn't just been Aethyta's growing desire to beat her fellow matriarchs to death with her bare hands that had done it. 'Deviant'. 'In-breeder'. 'Bluetongue'. And the ones that didn't go in for that kind of slur went more along the lines of 'desperate' or 'crazy'.

They'd never dared say any of it to Benezia's face, of course. She was too well-liked, too respected to risk a confrontation over something like that. But that had never stopped them from whispering it behind her back - and they'd certainly never cared what they said to Aethyta's face. She was a spacer brat from a long line of spacer brats; no lineage to be proud of. No great deeds to her name – none she could own up to in public, anyway. She had money, but no real wealth and, as a lot of the people Benezia worked with liked to point out, no class. She could keep a bar full of the toughest roughnecks you'd ever hope not to meet in stiches for hours, or clear it with a few choice words and a fist or two, but when it came to arguing policy online or in person, she may as well have been mute.

Benezia was supposed to have done better. Everyone knew it, except, maybe, Benezia herself.

"Yes," Benezia said quietly.

And, despite knowing for a century that this was the case, Aethyta felt the cut all the same, deep and hard and true. It was one thing to know; it was another entirely to hear it spoken aloud.

She heard Benezia sigh again, and the creak of the cot as she shifted position once more.

"You were right when you said having a child was a foolish idea," she continued, her voice cracking a little towards the end. "I had so little time to spare when it was just the two of us. I could no longer see how I could manage my work, with you _and_ a child, who would need me even more. Something had to be sacrificed. And, vain creature that I am, I thought that our people would need me more than you."

"You know I could have stayed home with the kid, "she pointed out, the line she always thought she'd say if Nezzy raised that excuse. "'s not like I wasn't close to washing my hands of the whole damn politics thing anyway."

"Perhaps you could have, and it would have worked. And perhaps it would not. Would you have resented me for continuing on when you could not, as you already did when I put forward your ideas as my own? Would _I_ have resented you for having time with our daughter that I could not? Thessia itself has little need of the skills you possess, but your association with me would continue to bar you from many of High Command's assignments; what would you have done when Liara was old enough to not need your constant attention? Drifted around our home until boredom drove you to seek out bar fights and strip clubs?"

The knife turned a little deeper.

"We were always very different people, Aethyta," Benezia continued sadly. "I think, over the years, that we slowly forgot that. We let too many things go unspoken between us."

"Look, you know, I can get all that," Aethyta said with effort, hating how her voice had gotten thick and rough with the tears she refused to let fall. "I might not like it, and I might not agree with it one hundred percent, but I _get_ it. The thing I _don't_ get was why you went like you did. You didn't even say goodbye. You may as well have not even left the damn letter."

"Really?" Benezia's surprise sounded unfeigned. "I had thought it would be obvious."

"Well, call me Commander fucking Oblivious then because I've never had a damn clue."

Another long pause, and a quiet sigh.

"You know that I always had trouble saying no to you, even when I should have known better," Benezia's voice was at once sad and fond. "If you had asked me to stay, I would have done so. And I think I would have wound up hating you for it."

"Oh."

"Yes. Or you, me."

They both lay in silence, for a time.

"Did you love me?"

"With all my heart."

And when she said like that, soft and warm with remembrance, Aethyta could believe her.

"But it wasn't enough."

"No."

"No."

Love wasn't always enough. Hell, her own parents had loved each other madly, and look at how they'd ended up. They'd loved her too, or so they'd said, but they'd left her alone with nothing but memory and their debts anyway.

"Do you still love me?"

Again, the words came tumbling out before she could second-guess them, even if, she told herself, it wasn't like the answer really mattered now, anyway. And, again, Benezia was silent for what seemed to be a very long time.

"I hardly know my own mind anymore, 'Thy," she said eventually, an odd note of wistfulness in her voice, "let alone my own heart."

"That's not a 'no'."

"It is not a 'yes, either."

"But it's not a 'no'," Aethyta insisted, feeling a slight, strange surge of something very close to relief.

Another long moment of silence fell.

"What of you?" Benezia asked abruptly.

"Me?" she blinked, and tried to settle back against the pillows more comfortably. "You know, this is not exactly the kind of conversation I like to have sober."

"That is not a 'no'."

"No," she agreed after another long silence. "I guess it's not."

And Benezia could make of that whatever she wanted.


	23. Benezia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The RL monster keeps getting in the way of things, so a big thank you to all those who persevere with my erratic updates. And an especially big thank you to those who've taken the time out to comment! You are stars!
> 
> On a somewhat related note, I've had quite a few people ask me if/when Shepard will appear. This is a work tagged Shiara, after all. The truth of the matter is that Shepard has what I call plot gravity, in that it's very hard to tell a story she appears in, with characters she's strongly associated with, without having her become a focus, or even the focus of the story. While, yes, this is a Shiara fic, this is not a Shepard story.
> 
> Finally, this is probably a good point to remind everyone that there are content advisories for this fic.

 

**Benezia**

_Death. All around, death. Everything, death. The death of hope. The death of dreams. The death of future. No time to run. No time to scream. No time to pray. Just people, burning. Cities, burning._ Worlds _, burning. The flash of light comes, and you die. The machines come, and we all die._

Better to die. Better to burn. Better than this.

Things _crawling beneath skin, twistingburningtearing. Needles, spikes, hooks driven through tender flesh. Blinded, deafened, deadened; new implants grating in raw, open wounds. Bones broken, reshaped, repurposed. Hands become claws, dark with blood of kith and kin. Feet crush skulls underfoot. And the voices. Always the_ voices _._

Scream. Scream all you wish, but the voices will not care. Scream as we screamed. Die as we died.

_Or surrender…_

Benezia's eyes shot open and the scream died, stillborn, on her lips, as awareness of who and where she was filtered into her consciousness. Thessia. The ship. The cabin. Aethyta-

Aethyta was gone, when she sat up to look for her, but her presence lingered nonetheless. The scent of her was all around, lingering in the sheets and blankets of the cot, even as her words from the night before hung heavy in the still air.

_Did you love me?_

It wasn't enough. It had never been enough, not truly. But for the longest of times they had both managed to pretended it was not so.

Benezia fell back against the cot, curling up on her side and hugging one of the pillows to her chest as she tried to control her breathing, calm her racing heart until the trembling stopped and the nausea faded. The vision was slightly different each time but always horrific: distorted, fleeting impressions of endless slaughter, and a torrent of rage and despair and other, entirely alien sensations that made her head ache anew. It was one of Saren's 'gifts' to her: the dying scream of an obliterated race.

How close they had all come to joining them. How close had she-

Breath by breath and beat by beat she regained some mastery of her body, unclenching fists and un-tensing muscles until she lay flat on her back once more, the pillow still clasped to her chest. Each new measured inhalation brought more of Aethyta to her, until it almost seemed she was there, in the same way Benezia had sometimes woken to find herself on Aethyta's side of their bed, whenever she was away, searching for her in the night.

_What of you?_  she had asked. And the answer had not been no.

But that was not to be dwelt upon. Down that path madness - more madness - lay. And it would not be  _right_ , even were that not mad, to toy with Aethyta's affections so. The thing was long done. The words, long unsaid, had finally been spoken aloud. Let it end there, as it must.

She lay for a time in the darkness, tempted,  _so_  tempted, to simply stay, eyes closed, and see if sleep would find her once more. Today would be worse than those that had come before, she was certain. More arrivals, drawn by Liara's polemics of the past few days. The hundreds who had come over the last few days would only be the start. More reporters would come with them, certainly, drawn by the continuing fallout from said polemics and the promise of more, and even by the news of Benezia's survival. Some interested in her, she knew, would not be deterred by her refusal to speak to them.

Just thinking about all of it only deepened the exhaustion that seemed sunk deep into her very bones, the dread that seized her chest. The cot was soft enough, Aethyta's lingering presence familiar and comforting in a way it should not have been. Not after so long.

But she could not hide behind these walls; someone would seek her out, be it her family or her foes. Sleep would provide no respite either, exposing her to the monsters and memories that prowled her dreams. And her daughter and her- and Aethyta did not need for her to be any more of a burden than she was already. They deserved better of her. Their  _people_  deserved better of her, no matter how she herself felt. She had to keep that at the forefront of her mind. Service was an honour and a responsibility that went beyond mere personal desires. She would be worse than useless, staying here. Worthless. A drain on stretched resources. Unacceptable when she had a duty.

Benezia rose carefully, taking care not to jar her head and turn the lingering ache there into something worse, and dressed, noting the accumulated stains and places where the material was starting to fray from use. Beggar's clothes. But they were all beggars here, were they not? Scavenging for what little sustenance and comfort could be salvaged from the wreckage of what had come before.

When she emerged, cautiously, from the cabin, she was greeted by the sounds of argument from the cargo bay, two well-loved voices trying to shout at each other without actually shouting.

"What  _were_  you thinking?  _Were_  you even thinking?"

"You weren't there! She was calling your mother a traitor and a fucking killer and worse!"

"I didn't need to be there! She could have called her a… a...  _varren's leavings_  for all I care. You simply can _no_ t go around beating up reporters!"

"Well, she ambushed me! What was I supposed to do? Ignore her?"

"Yes! Ignore her or walk away or send her to me! Goddess, Ce'Molla is  _in_ _famous_  for being deliberately antagonistic, especially when she thinks people are hiding things from her. Losing your temper on camera is  _exactly what she wanted_. People say all kinds of stupid things when they're angry. I'm going to have to give her who knows what concessions now to stop her from going public with the footage. I'll probably have to give her an exclusive interview. "

" Nobody told  _me_  there were reporters in the damn camp! I wouldn't know her from Queen Quirezia!"

"You're a thousand years old! You're supposed to exercise your judgement. Goddess, even  _Grunt_ knows not to hit reporters, and he's a two-year-old krogan!" A fist hit a table, seemingly for emphasis. "You played right into her hands. Maybe if you hadn't been crest-deep in a bottle-"

It was strange, in a way, like listening to all the arguments they'd never had, she and Aethyta. How many times had Benezia wanted to shout and rage at her bondmate for losing her self-control at inopportune moments? But she'd bite her tongue, because Aethyta was trying to do right by their people and, Goddess help her, there were days and days when Benezia struggled to see the good in those she debated, let alone the merit in their arguments. How many concessions had Benezia made on Aethyta's behalf over the years, how many egos, soothed, and how many lawsuits headed off or settled quietly, out of court? And she'd never said a word, because she had thought she'd understood and was prepared to accept what it meant to bring Aethyta into her heart, her home and her life, and wouldn't change her for all the credits on Illium.

Love was supposed to have been enough.

"Hey. my daughter  _died_ , alright? My daughter." The low growl in Aethyta's voice warned of an impending explosion. "Your  _sister_. Don't you fucking-"

Benezia cleared her throat.

Liara was the first to spot her, over Aethyta's shoulder, but Aethyta quickly turned to follow their daughter's gaze. Both of them froze, an almost identical guilty wince crossing their faces, in as much as that was possible for Liara, as she approached to a more reasonable speaking distance.

Liara looked tired and irritated and pale behind her wounds, the terrible scarring on her arm and neck barred by the white tank top she often wore to bed. Aethtya fared little better, her shoulders slumping as Benezia watched, her eyes sullen, dull and lined with fatigue. Had she lain awake as Benezia had, long into the night, thinking back over everything they ever were to each other? Imagining what it would have been like if Aethyta had come home early that day, as she sometimes did, and caught Benezia dithering and fighting tears on the threshold to their home, trying to find the courage to take that final step and end their life together?

The way Aethyta's eyes met hers and immediately dropped suggested that she had.

"If it would assist, I am willing to speak with the reporter."

The reaction to her suggestion was instant and, to her secret, shameful relief, to the negative.

"Nezzy, I dunno if that's really the best-"

"Mother, I appreciate the suggestion but-"

Aethyta and Liara spoke at once, and stopped just the same way, glancing over at her and then back at each other.

"No, no, look: you were right kid," Aethtya said after a moment, not looking away from Liara. "Yesterday was a pretty shit day all told but, well, I'm big enough and ugly enough to admit that I fucked up. It's my mess. I'll fix it."

Liara sighed and sat down behind her desk heavily enough that her chair slid backwards several inches.

"Again, I appreciate the offer, father, but I do not think that would be wise."

"What, do you think I'm going to go in there with guns blazing?" Aethyta bristled. "I can do subtle. I've charmed the pants off harder cases than her."

"I've no doubt," Liara said dryly, and Benezia did not miss the way her daughter's eye darted over towards her, nor the slightly pained expression that flickered across her face. "But putting that aside, I suspect that I am the one Ce'Molla's really interested in anyway. If she or any other reporters attempt to speak with either of you again, please refer them to Belia or me."

"Who?"

"My press secretary."

Liara sighed, as if the very notion pained her. Benezia was fairly certain it did.

"I  _would_  like you, though, to keep an eye on our krogan guests today," Liara told Aethyta. "The situation on Tuchanka is growing increasingly unstable and Wrex needs Aralakh Company back. They're supposed to be shipping out this evening, so we can expect them  _all_  back in camp by sometime this afternoon. I'd prefer to avoid any further 'incidents' or misunderstandings."

"Sure, I'll see if I can stop 'em from eating anyone," Aethtya said with a roll of her eyes. "Anything else? While I'm taking orders?"

"No. Not really."

The awkward silence that was starting to become an unfortunate hallmark of so many of Benezia's conversations fell once more, ending only when Aethyta cleared her throat, glancing over at Benezia briefly again.

"Well, guess I'd better get to it then. You, uh, you both know where to find me if you need me."

Benezia turned to watch her leave, feeling an odd, twisting tug at her heart as she did so. With it came a fleeting, wild urge to follow after her, to take her hand, to pull her into a tight embrace and never let her go.

She had always thought, back when she had regularly thought of such things, that the day Aethyta chose to press the issue of their severed bonding would be full of anger and accusations, leaving her feeling drained and quite probably guilty but, equally, somehow lighter. Freed from the imaginary burden of silence and secrecy. She had envisioned a confrontation at her home, and feared one online or at a Forum or other such public venue where the potential for embarrassment and unwelcome questions would be at its greatest. Aethyta would have little to lose should she choose to cause a public scene.

But the confrontation had never come. And, last night, there was no shouting. Surprisingly little anger. Just quiet words in the dark, words that left her feeling not at all relieved but, rather, strangely bereft, as if she were standing on the threshold of their home all over again, trying to summon the courage to take the first – and final – step.

"I don't think that I handled that as well as I could have," Liara admitted once the airlock had cycled and they were alone. She pressed a hand to the side of her crest above her ear, and the pressure point there. "Was she like that when you were together?"

Aethyta's temper was infamous in certain circles. The members of High Command and proprietors of many a bar or club certainly had been given cause to doubt her restraint on more than one occasion. But Benezia, herself, had never had reason to harbour such doubts herself.

Until the other night. Hand, rough on her shoulders. Breath, hot on her face. Talons piercing the heavy fabric of her dress, drawing pinpricks of blood. Saren's voice, raise on anger-

No. No, let it lie. Aethyta was not Saren. Saren was dead. Focus on this moment in time. On the question she had been asked.

The one sure-fire way to set Aethyta off, and often explosively, was to threaten or speak ill of those she considered to be under her protection. Or her family.

"Mother?" Liara prompted.

_She was calling your mother a traitor and a fucking killer and worse._

Even if the words spoken were true.

"Did we argue? A t times." she conceded. "We differed on many matters."

"Was that why-"

"No questions today, please, Liara," she said, taking the seat across from her daughter. "'leastways, not about that. How bad is the fallout?"

Liara frowned, but allowed the subject change.

"Containable, I think," she said. "I haven't really dealt with Ce'Molla before but I have something she wants-"

"I have no doubt that you can handle the reporter," Benezia interrupted with a sentiment that she still found exceedingly odd to be applying to her daughter. "I was referring to the larger situation."

"Oh."

Liara's crestfallen expression told Benezia all that she needed to know.

"I see."

With some apparent effort, Liara managed to find a smile that Benezia suspected she was meant to find reassuring.

"Honestly, it's not nearly as bad as it could have been - at least where you're concerned," Liara said. "There's some discussion about whether or not you were indoctrinated, but Shepard's involvement seems to have helped sway initial opinion. In any case, everyone found," the barest of pauses, "...what happened to be very hard to believe at the time, so there are those who are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. And I think people are looking for 'positive' stories right now, what with everything that's happened. There's too much ill news as it is without adding more. I can put together the news reports for you, if you like. There aren't as many as I had expected, but then the Reapers made a point of destroying our communications infrastructure before targeting anything else. Word will take time to truly spread."

Benezia needed to know what was being said about her, and how it was being said, if she were to have any hope of dealing with those that would come today or tomorrow, or the next in search of her.

"Please. And where you are concerned..?"

Liara's smile, forced as it was, vanished, and she abruptly focused her attention on her monitors. The fingers of her good hand moved over the interface swiftly; those that remained on her bad, with clumsy precision.

"Well," she said slowly, "the matriarchs of Cyone want my head on a platter and, frankly, I'm half-tempted to give it to them. It's all such a  _mess,_  Mother.

"About a quarter of our surviving military seems to think I'm preparing to stage some kind of a coup. Matriarch Vibianna in Cianna is  _furious_  and telling everyone who will listen about how I rudely refused her offer of guidance because I'm more interested in grandstanding than helping people. Since she is effectively leading our largest remaining city on Thessia, people  _are_  listening.

"Meanwhile, Hinenia, Melganra and Lith are threatening to secede unless they get help immediately - which I'm sure would only improve their situations. What's left of Illium is on the brink of starvation while crops on Nicacal rot due to lack of workers capable of repairing the automated systems and the resources to do it with. Oh, and the surviving settlements on Trategos are _fighting_  each other for fuel. They all want me to step in somehow, but anything I do to help one group will only infuriate another. And that's just the colonies I  _know_  about. And the other races-"

She stopped abruptly, looking Benezia over with a frown she couldn't quite mask. Not for the first time that morning, Benezia became painfully aware of how worn and ragged she looked, how she'd let herself fade away to near nothing.

_Worthless._ The voice, rich and bass, dripped with contempt.  _A beggar. A broken thing. The outside finally matches what's within._

"-and it's nothing you really need to worry about just now. I'll manage. We'll manage."

The 'somehow' at the end of that sentence went unspoken, but was there nonetheless.

"Liara-"

"Mother?"

"I..."

A hundred words hung on the tip of Benezia's tongue: words of advice, words of comfort, even words of commiseration. She had been a young priestess once, the youngest in twenty generations to don the markings and take up the raiment of T'Al'Etah, and all that entailed. The death of her mentor some decades before had left no one ready nor, perhaps, capable of coaching her through the moments of doubt, frustration and even sheer terror that arose from becoming one of the de facto heads of an ancient faith. She had later used the experience of those days to counsel others, from Councillors to CEOs to celebrities, who had risen too high, too quickly for their own comfort. The art of juggling duty, expectation and perception with personal desires, of managing factions and fickle followers, of judging the potential value of allies and the likely enmity of possible foes, and how to do it all while remaining true to yourself and your values - they were things that could be taught, though, of course, like all else, such skills took time to master.

It was all there, waiting to be said. The distilled wisdom from centuries of surviving, thriving within, even  _steering_  the machinations of the followers of two faiths, of muddying her hands with petty politics and base celebrity, of taking unilateral action and building the broadest consensus for change within the highest and lowest levels of their peoples' governments.

_She's right not to involve you. What can you possibly offer her? Everyone who ever truly listened to you is dead. Did you enjoy our suffering so much that you want it for Liara too?_

The second voice, the one that sounded so much like dear Umbri that her heart broke, was right. It was those same centuries of experience that had led her to inflict Saren upon the galaxy, and her belief in her own supposed 'wisdom' that had brought her here, to ruin. Liara needed her mistakes and her misjudgements as little as she needed her weakness.

Instead, she sighed and said:

"You know that I am proud of you, regardless of what happens."

Even that did not have reassuring effect she had hoped. Liara forced another weak smile.

"I know. Thank you. I just hope you'll still feel that way by the time this is all done."

"Why wouldn't I?"

Benezia felt a frown crease her own brow, and Liara turned her attention back to her terminals rather than meet her concerned gaze.

"Oh, it's just paranoia talking, I think," she said. "There are so many things that can go wrong."

It was a lie. Not a bad one, certainly, perhaps one even worryingly well-told, but Liara was her daughter, and Benezia had known her from the moment their minds had first touched. But as to what, exactly she was lying about, Benezia could not immediately say, and she doubted her daughter would be drawn on the matter.

"Can I help you in any way?" she asked, taking care to be gentle.

' _Can you_ help _?'_  The bass voice again, mocking. So like Sovereign. She wished it would stop.  _How could you possibly help? Does she need someone to betray your people again?_

She had been foolish to make the offer. But there was a pause in activity while Liara appeared to consider it. After a moment, she rummaged around on her desk and pulled up a diplomatic datapad, thumbing through it quickly.

"Actually, yes. The humans want a formal alliance with us outside of the remit of the Council. It all seems fine to me, but I'm not terribly familiar with treaty language and I may be missing things. Palla thinks much the same. If you could look it over and tell me what you think, that would be extremely useful."

"Of course."

Analysis was probably something that she could still do, something she had done numerous times before. Indeed, had she not been involved, from the outset, on the treaties and agreements that ended what the war between the turians and the humans ? The ones that later brought the humans into civilised galactic society?

A lifetime ago, perhaps, but so was everything else.

"You understand that there is typically a great deal of back and forth with such proposals" Benezia continued. "While I suppose that, given the circumstances, some abbreviation of the process would not be unreasonable, you should not put your name and thumb to anything in haste, and especially not on the behalf of others."

She glanced again at the pad in her daughter's hand, then back up at her face, saw the determination there, and hesitated.

"By rights," she continued carefully, "something of that magnitude should be put to the people."

"There isn't time for a broad consultation," Liara said curtly, "and no means to call a vote besides. We still don't have coms with half of the planet. We'll be sure to limit the applicable duration on anything to a few years at most. When Admiral Hackett and I have come to an agreement about everything else, I'll put it to the camp. That will have to do for now."

"Just as you say."

Liara's remaining eye narrowed.

"I'm not doing this because I want to, you know," she said, sudden defensiveness in every line of her body.

"I know."

"Or because I like 'grandstanding'."

Even after all that had happened, her Liara could not possibly have changed that much. Grandstanding about Protheans, perhaps, in a half-empty lecture hall, but not about politics.

"I would be greatly surprised if you did." And then, to forestall what would certainly have been another unneeded protest, she added: "Do what you think must be done, Liara. I will help you as best I can."

"I... appreciate that," Liara replied, ruffled feathers settling back into place. "The humans aren't expecting a reply until they're ready to leave, so that gives us another day or so to work out our response. I'll include a copy of the proposal along with some news reports for you to look over. And, well..."

"Yes?"

"I wasn't sure whether I should include them or not, but there is some mail for you as well. Letters. I haven't had a chance to read through them myself yet, but I did screen them for-"

For once since her awakening, Benezia's mind worked quickly.

"You are  _reading my mail_?" she asked, more than a touch incredulously.

"Well, yes, but-"

"And was the letter from Melania addressed to Aethyta or you?"

"Aethyta, but I thought-"

"Are you reading  _everyone's_  mail?"

"Not  _every_ one's," Liara said, matching incredulity with bemusement. "Just the ones my VI flags as being of interest. Most of the time it just skims them and produces a report. You know, data mining."

"Liara T'Soni!" she exclaimed, appalled. "What in the Goddesses' good name possessed you to do such a thing? Did I not teach you to be respectful of others' privacy?"

She paused as a sudden, angry suspicion seized her.

_Shepard._

"Is spying something else that you learned from this Shepard of yours?"

"What? No! Shepard wouldn't-" Liara replied, stopped abruptly, and then settled herself back down into what Benezia was coming to recognise as her 'business' face: set hard, with anger behind the determination in her eye.

"I don't see what you're upset about. I need to know what's going on, and this is the easiest way to do it." She held Benezia's gaze, unflinching. "I would have thought you'd understand that. I know what Aethyta did for High Command. And I  _know_  that you knew what she did. And I can't believe that you would have stayed with her for so long if you did not approve of her work on some level. "

"There is a difference between a targeted investigation and what sounds altogether too much like blanket surveillance."

Her voice, to her own surprise, was rising with each word, and her anger with it, sudden electricity in her veins. Reading her mail! Her private correspondence. Her own daughter!

"I should not have to tell you that!"

"And you don't need to," Liara said coldly. "I know what I'm doing."

"Do you? Truly? Liara, just because you have the power to intrude on people's personal exchanges does not mean that you should exercise it! If they find out what you've done-"

"'They' will not find out, Mother, because no one will tell them, and any oddities or delays can easily be blamed on our damaged infrastructure and lack of bandwidth."

It sometimes seemed impossible that this war could have taken but a handful of years, the time she supposedly spent stasis not even long enough for a babe to come off the breast. What had happened while she slept? The Liara she had raised would never have even dreamed of intruding upon another's privacy.

_Just like you would never have dreamed of taking from another mind without consent. But you_ did _, didn't you? You even enjoyed it, the power, feeling the queen's mind break and give._

And, as quick as that, the anger vanished, leaving only the hollow exhaustion and ever-present aches in its wake. She had no right to complain. She had done worse.

"Give me the letters, Liara," she said. "All of them. I will decide for myself which ones I do and do not need to see. And you will stop reading them in future."

"I can't guarantee that last bit," Liara said stiffly, turning back to her monitors. "I need to know what people are saying if I'm to stay on top of things. There are too many secrets already. But I will pass everything that comes through for you on." A few more button presses and she was handing over the datapad. "Here. Just don't blame me if not everything is to your liking."

Benezia took it from her without even glancing through the contents.

"Is there anything else we should discuss? Or that I can help you with?"

"I don't think so. Not right now, at any rate."

The chill and distances to Liara's voice was painful to hear, though it was not near as bad as it was to look upon her expression, this hard-edged stranger that was her daughter. Benezia rose, ducking her head, dropping her eyes, rather than face it any more.

"Then I had best go as well."

Benezia didn't look back as she left, and Liara didn't call after her either. It was, perhaps, for the best.  _Reading her mail_. Reading everyone's mail. She, herself, may have had no right to complain, but there were others who did. Aethyta, for one.

She clutched the datapad a little more tightly as she waited for the airlock to finish cycling. Just because Liara had the power to invade their privacy in such a way did not mean that she should exercise it. Had Benezia taught her nothing? What had happened to make Liara so... cold?

_You happened._

If she closed her eyes, she could see Umbri's face, dead-eyes and staring, as well as hear her voice.

Benezia had happened. That was the simple truth of the matter. She had turned on her daughter, back on Noveria. Before that, even, decades ago, simply by turning away, keeping her secrets too close. And so Liara had fled into the arms of the human Spectre, who'd used and betrayed her, because she had no-one else to turn to. She had no other family; she had no siblings, nor cousins she might call upon, and Benezia had managed to deny her a father, even in death.

And then, of course, the Reapers had come.

She felt the bite of the datapad's edge, hard into her hand, and forcibly relaxed her grip with a long, slow exhale. It would be alright, in the end. Liara was still alive, at least. Aethyta was here, and the Spectre was not, and the Reapers were gone. They had to be gone. They had to be gone for Benezia to be here. The voices were just… echoes.

It was quite light, outside, when she reached it, but the morning air still chill, fogging with each breath she took. Summer was continuing her inexorable march towards autumn and then winter. This year it would be terrible, Benezia was certain. Armali had always had some snow, up in the mountains, in the darkest depths of the year, but the coming winter would bring with it all manner of snow and storms normally seen at only the highest of high latitudes. She did not know how long it would take for the rest of the dust in the atmosphere to settle; if it did not soon, or they could not find the resources to begin clearing it deliberately, would her city become like Nefrane, lost beneath the snow and ice of countless lifetimes? The peaks of Noveria, never once, in a million years, seeing the thaw?

Benezia turned her face and hands up towards the new-risen sun as it struggled to breach the haze blanketing the planet, and closed her eyes, widening her stance. It was one of the oldest forms of meditation she knew, a simple centring of self and opening of mind to one of the most basic rhythms of the cosmos. There was no mantra to accompany it, nor any other focal point beyond the light and the warmth of the sun, the measured exhale of her breath and the beat of her heart within her chest.

Alive, in this time and in this place, under this star, all other creatures beside her in spirit.

She had risen to greet the sunrise thus since her earliest days of service. Even in the worst of times, the simple ritual had filled her with peace and contentment, and given her energy enough to face whatever the day might bring. A reminder that all forms of life, no matter how disparate, were connected to each other through their suns, the sustenance they all drew from them. A thousand worlds, a thousand stars, innumerable life-forms; all alike in that one simple way.

Now there was nothing to fill her, no matter how she sought, but the chill air on her skin, the ash on her tongue and the grey skies above.

Dull. Empty. Alone.

She let her head and hands drop.

There was no hunger waiting, when Benezia looked within herself, beyond an entirely intellectual recognition that she must eat at some point that morning. The when and what of it did not really seem to matter. Later, perhaps. The dining hall would be crowded now, and her head ached anew at the thought of sitting amongst so many, for all she knew she ought to join them and be gracious in doing so. She must begin to mind appearances again, if not her own sake, then for the sake of her daughter. There were press around.

And, for the sake of her daughter, Benezia had work to do. A treaty to read and analyse. News reports to view. Letters- Her fist clenched and unclenched. Work she could do. She could be useful. She simply needed somewhere where she might sit and read, for a time, without interruption. Without the threat of the press.

She kept her head down and her eyes on the path in front of her, absently noting the footprints left in the overnight rain of ash and the careless detritus of too many people with other concerns. She cut between storage containers and sleeping huts, stepped over puddles and leaking pipes, ducked under cables and washing lines slung between shelters, towards the outmost edge of the camp, down by the river. She could smell the river long before she reached it, the stink of rot and death and other pollution lingering even now. Even now, bloated bodies washed up upon its debris-choked shores, Reaper and asari alike, to be stripped of anything of use and burnt to ash downstream, near the latrines and other waste, or buried in mass graves. Unpleasant work, to be sure, but necessary.

What prayers were being said for the dead? Were any, to light their way?

Likely not. Few knew the words anymore. Fewer believed. But the old ways, the old rites had their uses, even to those not devout, and they once would have been seen as being just as necessary as the disposal of the bodies. Centuries of life went hand in hand with the potential for centuries of loss; ritual and custom provided a tried and tested framework for the expression and surmounting of grief. Each ancient tribe had once had its own customs for death and the dead, some nothing more than a few words over where the fallen lay before the group moved on, some so complicated that they took weeks or even months to properly enact, leading to the formation of some of the very first villages.

The Siari tradition, though few observed it in full these days, was of the Nine Months: three months of mourning, for the life lost; three months of reflection, for the life shared; and three months of celebration, for the life lived. Most modern siarists simply co-opted the rituals of other races and religions, mixing and matching all manner of practices to suit individual preference. Athamist doctrine, though, remained much the same now as it had down the millennia. Prayers for the deceased, public, with much pomp and ceremony, so she might find a space as a star at the Goddess's side. A public celebration of all the lives and minds the deceased had touched. The creation of a private  _ait'sta'tari_  - a memory stone - to be kept and carried until the memory was no longer needed, or the token wore away to nothing, indicating the time of mourning had come to an end.

One of Benezia's earliest memories was of a funeral. Her grandmother's. Candles in the dark, incense and song in the air. Bewilderment and awe.

It was not much later at all that she found herself standing before the greenhouses, in their own walled enclosure on the very banks the river. Ugly, ungainly things, cobbled together from steel scrap, cargo containers and whatever translucent materials had been brought back as salvage, they were a far cry from the graceful, delicate structures that dominated the great agri-worlds of their people. Here were windows from ruined office buildings, some clear, some with their electrochromic tinting stuck on to various degrees of darkness. There, glass panes from an old storefront, more than one a spiderweb of cracks. An entire section covered by thin plastic sheets, flimsy, of the sort used to consolidate goods for shipping, flapping in the wind against their ties.

But it was warm inside the largest of them, when Benezia entered, even after the overnight chill, and humid, full of the rich, loamy smell of damp soil and an underlying hint of mildew. Neat rows of green and blue sprouts marched off into the near distance, some in soil, some in nutrient solutions, raised up off the ground by battered tables and still more crates. Piping, overhead, dripping into algae vats, and more racks of plants, suspended from walls and ceiling.

If she closed her eyes, she might imagine herself to be back in her home, for a time, in her own gardens once more. In her own small greenhouse, overflowing with tender seedlings and out of season fruit. The herb garden beside the kitchen, each plant carefully chosen and bred over centuries for depth of flavour. Rows of sweet-smelling  _sarmyna_  and  _dilin_  in the dwarf orchard to bring the birds and other wild things, filling morn and eve with bright song. The  _cinsiri_  at the heart of it all, grown tall and straight and strong for her daughter.

She breathed in deep and long, and felt some of the tension set deep within her shoulders leave her body, tension she had not entirely realised she was carrying.

"Athame's blessing to you this morning, Matriarch."

Benezia opened her eyes to find the Ardat-Yakshi moving towards her, edging between the narrow rows with an improvised watering can in her hands. The warning tattoo stood out like a lesion upon her cheek: instantly identifiable, instantly damning.

"And to you," she frantically wracked her brain for the girl's name and, to her relief, came up with it relatively quickly, "Falere. How does this morning find you?"

"Well, thank you. Today I meditated with the sunrise on the words of the matron Jedona. I've always found them to be a comfort in times of upheaval."

Benezia found a smile that approached sincerity. She had always been partial Jedona's work herself, finding her words succinct and laced with wry humour. However, the generations-dead priestess had little recognition outside of selected scholarly circles. She was a matron, for one, and few memories of her and hers existed for another, doomed as they were. Moreover, where written accounts of her works existed, the translations were old and poor, to say the least. Benezia had always meant to set aside a year or two to do her own, and a modern commentary.

"As well you might. They were written in a time of great upheaval."

"Yes. The Bihari Migration," Falere said, a smile coming to her own lips, her voice oddly wistful. "When I was younger, I used to imagine what it would have been like to be with them. All of the snow and those storms. Lost at sea for months on end. Being cast ashore beneath the cliffs of Ithreta. It all seemed like such a grand adventure." The smile became tight. "But I think I've seen enough of adventure for now."

It was a statement that begged further explanation. In another life, Benezia might well have sought it, much as she would once have carefully drawn out tales of woe and heartache from her students. But not today.

"Have you a favourite passage?"

"There are several that I like. Mostly where she talks about how the trials we face are opportunities for us to understand ourselves better."

She visibly hesitated then, glancing down at her feet before looking back up at Benezia, not quite meeting her eyes.

"I know that it's presumptuous of me to ask, Matriarch, but do you have one?"

"There is no presumption at all, Falere," she said, closing her eyes for a moment to try to think, to remember.

It was one of the more common questions of her life, asked by those seeking more insight into what she thought and why. The answer was different each time, depending on the day and her mood, the context of the question and the nature of the questioner. Sometimes she would answer with, yes, a personal favourite; at others, she might choose a fragment she thought would provoke thought, introspection in the questioner or their audience. Admittedly, those who asked could never be sure which of the two answers they'd received, but Benezia had always found it best, in her role, to remain at least somewhat enigmatic on such matters.

"Here and now," she continued with more confidence, "I believe it is:  _'In the darkest times, hope often comes harder to us than despair. But these sorrows we feel are fleeting. Either they pass, or we do.'_ "

She watched the girl's expression grow fixed, uncomfortable, and, after a moment's confusion realised her mistake.

"No, that was said by Matriarch Leda, wasn't it?"

_Listen to yourself. Your life's study, and you can't even get a single, simple question right. It was all such a waste of time, wasn't it?_

Benezia pressed a hand to her temple and closed her eyes again briefly. Why could she not properly pierce the fog that beset her mind? Why did so little come to her as it should? She might endure these accursed headaches, the blasted voices if only she could still  _think_! Still remember. At least she had gotten the girl's name right. She must take solace in such small victories, she knew, else she would have nothing.

_You have nothing, because you are nothing. You deserve nothing._

"Matriarch..?"

Benezia jerked back to the here and now, abruptly aware she had been silent for several seconds. The uncomfortable expression on the girl's face had morphed to one of open concern.

"I'm sorry," she said, and hoped her smile did not look as forced as it felt. "I am afraid I'm never at my best before midday."

She was slightly startled by how easily the lie came to her lips. Aethyta was the one who'd always clung to sleep, more often than not rising only well after the rest of the household was awake and fed, the day's business underway. She would emerge from their room, blinking and stretching, to meander downstairs and attempt to wheedle brunch from the chef. Benezia, though, had always risen to greet the sun - even if she sometimes went back to a warm bed and the comfort of strong arms shortly thereafter.

Falere gave her another uncertain smile.

"Rila's much the same. My sister. She would-"

She blinked and her smile fled again, face falling into clear sorrow before she rallied herself.

"I'm sorry. Matriarch Tadeá says-" another momentary falter, " _used_  to say that it's best not to dwell overlong on the things we can't change, so I won't. This sorrow will pass, just as you say. How may I be of service to you, Matriarch?"

Relieved by the change of topic, Benezia held up the pad slightly.

"I had hoped to sit someplace quiet for a time. Uninterrupted. I have some work to do."

"Ah. I understand. Well, you shouldn't be too bothered here," Falere said, turning back to her work. "Few come into the greenhouses unless they must, and there's not that much need for more than me at the moment. You'd think it'd be a choice duty. The work's not really that hard, and it's inside, in the warm, but I guess they think-"

She stopped abruptly once more and sighed in seeming exasperation, whether at herself or at those others in the camp, Benezia could not say.

"Anyway, there's a table and some chairs down the end that you're welcome to use. I'd welcome some company, especially if it's quiet. I'd forgotten how noisy people can be."

Benezia had visited the monastery on Lessus a handful of occasions throughout her life. A quiet place of solemn study, work and reflection, she doubted that the girl had ever truly known what it was to live amongst other asari, especially if she had been taken there as an adolescent. What was it like, to live a life so isolated? How did one find meaning when denied the connections that were the very lifeblood of their people? Work and meditation could only hold loneliness at bay for so long.

Benezia had always surrounded herself with people. Falere, no doubt, would have been utterly lost in a household like hers- like hers had  _been_ , more than two score of acolytes and guards and staff alike crammed under one too-small roof. The noise had only died down in the evenings, after dinner, as each took to their own private spaces for studies, training or meditation.

Her greenhouses had always been quiet, though. Everyone knew not to disturb her there. It was meditative, in its own way.

She carefully made her way down between the neat rows towards the back of the building, finding a small alcove made from the end of a shipping container, its edges jagged and twisted. The promised table and chairs were all but buried beneath empty pots and oddments, an emergency light taped to the ceiling for additional illumination. She cleared a space for herself with her back to the wall and a view out over the plants and their gardener, placed the datapad on the table before her and... hesitated. An odd, tight tension rose in her chest as she stared down at the device, at her own reflection within it, dark and haggard.

She had to turn it on. She had to see what was being said, and by who. But, Goddess forgive her, for all that she had demanded access to her letters, to the news, the prospect of reading any of it filled her with a terrible dread and a rising urge to flee.  _Anything_  could be contained on the device. Anything at all. Could she stand, truly, to read what was being said about her? What if it was terrible? What if it was  _good_? And who would take out time to write to her?

The feeling spread to her gut, twisting there until she felt bile rising in the back of her throat. Her heart began to pound, hard, against her ribs, a matching drumbeat in her skull, her mouth dry as dust.

This was ridiculous. They were just words. Words she had wanted to see not fifteen minutes ago.

Words that Liara had, like as not, already read, because Liara was actively  _spying on the camp_  and doing Goddess only knew what else besides. Liara, who was  _reading Benezia's mail_  because she could. But just because Liara had the power to violate her privacy so did not mean-

Benezia laid her hands flat on the table, on either side of the device, to steady herself, drawing her breath in slow, measured pauses, in through her nose and out through her mouth until her heart slowed to something approaching normal.

They were just words. Words that would continue to exist, no matter who did or did not read them. And, even if they were terrible words, or merely true ones, she had read many an unflattering and unwelcome thing about herself over the course of her life. She had come to learn from such commentaries, in time, or at least draw amusement from them. She had even purchased a copy of that horrible caricature for her study, framed as a reminder to herself that everyone was a fool in their own way. There was no reason why she could not read these words now, see these vids. She owed it to them, those who had written to her, to read their thoughts, to hear their voices. She owed it to everyone to do what she could, however little that might be.

Benezia closed her eyes and exhaled carefully once more, wiping suddenly sweaty palms on her pant legs, before replacing them on either side of the datapad. Then, in one too-quick movement, she forced herself to flick the device on, and then to look at its contents, even as her eyes tried to betray her, skittering away as if forcibly repelled. There were three headings on the small screen: news, mail and documents.

There. That wasn't so terrible.

She let out a breath she hadn't realised she was holding.

The treaty she would look at last - she needed to know more of recent events to fully judge its impact. The news would be second, so she might have it fresh within her mind when she read the final document. That left the letters. The display indicated four.

Again the tension rose; again, gritting her teeth, she forced herself through it, opening the first letter without even glancing at its details for fear she would be able to go no further if she did. Even then, she found herself staring at the opening line for the longest time, unable to read on.

_Dearest Benny_.

She had to smile, at that. There were only a handful of people in the galaxy who could get away with calling her that most despised of nicknames, and even fewer still who would dare try. She had to smile, despite herself, despite how strange it felt to do so.

_Dearest Benny,_

I fear I have little time to write. The situation here on Teskasos is difficult; power and extranet access are intermittent. I'd just about given up all hope of there being any good news ever again when Huria brought me the newcast. I don't care about the how or the why - I'm just glad you're alive. Goddess be praised!

I'm well enough, all things considered. My daughters are with me, my acolytes and their families. Your death - or, I suppose, what we thought was your death - was a warning that most of us who knew you well chose to heed. You would not act as you did without cause, and this 'indoctrination' is proof of that. I can't begin to imagine what it was like for you. But I do know that, once again, I owe you my life, my friend.

Take care of yourself, and Liara. What I hear of her of late is troubling, but you know that

I _know better than to believe everything I hear. She has always had a good heart, and I don't believe that even this calamity could change that._

I hope to see you soon, and hear from you sooner.

Goddess bless,

Gaiana

She only realised that she was weeping when a drop formed on the end of her nose, splashing down to distort a handful of letters in text below. Alive! Alive and well, and with those dear to her. Good news, for once, just as she had said. Benezia scrubbed at her cheeks, brushing the tears away as best she could.

They'd been maidens together, she and Gaiana, meeting at that horrible commune on Myfraxis, both young enough and naïve enough to think that distance from home equalled potential for enlightenment. Gaiana had been only worthwhile thing to come out of that particular experience, in truth. It had been she who'd stolen the shuttle to get them off the miserable planet and back into asari space, persuading Benezia to fly it. From there, they'd sent the shuttle back to its owner on autopilot, then hitched their way out towards the Terminus. Two together were safer two alone, they'd reasoned. It had certainly proven so on more than one occasion: if Gaiana owed Benezia her life, then the same was true in reverse, several times over.

Should she write back? Gaiana would expect her to, if at all possible. But what should she say? What  _could_  she say? That she had...

That she was...

And what did she say of poor Rosi? Another of that precious handful, but one who'd died, fevered and incoherent, at once too slow and too quick. Her handful of surviving acolytes crowding around her bed only to fall back, incredulous, at the approach of the impossible ghost, returned to haunt her final moments. Her hand, hot and dry within Benezia's own, her eyes fever-bright and unfocused, words little more than a rasp.

How little Benezia had thought of her since. Her friend of so long, whose dying thoughts had been of her, and Benezia had not even truly wept at her passing. She had not gone to see her body burnt upon the pyres, said a single prayer or meditated five minutes on the connection they had shared. She had not spoken of her deeds or shared her memories, nor offered to take her students in as her own. Little wonder Palla and Rosi's other former acolytes looked upon Benezia with such contempt: she had abandoned her friend for a second time. There would be no chance of a third.

Benezia was still agonising over a reply when the flimsy door on the opposite end of the building creaked open to admit the Justicar. The Justicar herself, resplendent in her red and gold, took in the room in a single, practiced glance, her eyes lingering over Benezia before Benzia dropped her own gaze, ducking her head and trying to return her focus to the datapad. There would be no mercy there. She knew that now.

The arrival did not go unnoticed by Falere either, who straightened from her work, and then straightened a touch further when the identity of the intruder registered.

"Mother," she said.

"Falere," the Justicar replied, slightly stiff. "I hope this morning finds you well."

"Well enough, thank you. I was just telling Matriach Benezia of my morning's meditations."

Benezia could not help but glance up at her name, just in time to meet the Justicar's gaze for a second time.

"I see," the Justicar said slowly, her brow creasing in the slightest of frowns at whatever she saw in Benezia's face. When she looked away again, back to her daughter, Benezia felt inexplicably relieved. "It is good that you're keeping to your studies."

"I suppose. More than four hundred years of habit is hard to break."

"This is so."

The watering can, once held at her side, was clasped to Falere's slender chest like a breastplate as she looked up at her mother. The Ardat-Yakshi was a tiny, frail thing to the Justicar's broad shoulders and toned muscles. Had Benezia not heard them speak, she would have found any claim of blood between them suspect.

There had never been space for such doubts with Liara. Liara had her eyes, her build, and more besides. But the similarities between them ended at the physical, for the most part. Liara sought solitude where Benezia surrounded herself with company. Where Benezia dealt so often with the intangible, Liara seemed satisfied only with what she could see with her own eyes and touch with her own two hands. And, even where, at a glance, their interests lay in similar fields, they were fundamentally different at their core. History, for one. Benezia had studied long the lore and legend of their own people, using it as a basis to try to push them forward. Liara focused, with laser intensity, on the scraps and leavings of the long-dead Protheans, speculating about the past in isolation.

That particular obsession had given Benezia cause to wonder at the universe's sense of irony, more than once.

The one thing they could truly be said to share, beyond superficialities, was that which had ultimately helped drive them apart: a certain calm, understated stubbornness, a refusal to give in to the will of another when pushed. But even that was no longer something they shared. Where the war and all that came before seemed to have forged Liara's will into a rod of iron, it had left Benezia a broken thing, starting at shadows.

"I asked for a second ration pack this morning," the Justicar was saying when Benezia returned to the here and now with another start. The warrior's body was lined with sudden tension, her words, her very stance ever so slightly hesitant. "I thought we might sit together and eat."

"Oh." A glance down at the can, clasped in two pale and delicate hands, then back up. "I've already eaten. With the first shift."

Falere hesitated again for the briefest of moments, then deposited the watering can between two rows of plants, her movements quick but careful.

"But that doesn't mean that I can't sit with you for a while. I'm sure Matriarch Benezia won't mind keeping an eye on things while I'm gone."

Benezia inclined her head carefully when Falere looked askance back at her. The Justicar's smile at the interruption and acquiescence was unpractised and certainly hesitant, but it lit up her eyes regardless, softening the hard lines of her face.

"I would like that. Come. There is a spot not far from here that I used for my own meditations this morning."

Moments later, Benezia was alone once more, only the plants and water for company, and this thing full of words she would, were she being honest with herself, rather throw in the river than continue to read. Alone, while her own daughter surrounded herself with her small circle of advisors, their counsel more trusted, and rightly so. While her own daughter  _spied_  on the camp, and told lies as it suited her. While she  _read Benezia's mail_. Her hands curled back into fists. Just because Saren had-

No, not Saren. Saren was dead. Liara was her concern now. But what if Liara lied about that too? No. She wouldn't. Not about something like that.

Benezia had the letters now, at least, and news besides. With those two to hand, she could begin to make out the whole truth from the half-ones, and the lies of the past months, and perhaps begin to help her daughter. Already there were fragments to be gleaned from the first piece of correspondence. Teskasos was a small, new agricultural colony, founded only within the last five hundred years on the very fringes of asari space. Word of Liara's actions was spreading far – and quickly. And if there were survivors there, they may have resources to share.

Steeling herself, she flicked across to the next missive, and felt her heart freeze in her chest, the name of the sender popping out at her as if it were projected into her skull.

_Shiala._

She felt a strange, sick tightness in her chest as she stared down at the name, as if she were an old drumskin, worn and stretched too thin over the frame, ready to burst under the first ill-placed blow.

_Goddess_.

How she had come to depend on the captain of her guard after she had left Aethyta, a rock of stability in a time of turmoil, a dependable, devoted presence at Benezia's side through decades of heartache and joy. And, somewhere along the line, the quiet commando whose horizons Benezia had been privileged to help broaden had become a companion as well as a protector and student. She was someone Benezia had taken deeper into her heart than was certainly wise, and, eventually, into to her bed, which was even less so. She had known it. Shiala had known it. And it had happened anyway.

Shiala had been the first to step forward when Benezia had laid out her plan to bring Saren back into the fold. She was always the first. The most loyal. Benezia's spear and her shield and her right hand. She had trusted Benezia, and Benezia had trusted her in turn - but not enough to be swayed from her path by the doubts she voiced.

Shiala, with her serious eyes, her shy smile and her kind heart, had followed Benezia into darkness and been abandoned there.

The guilt, never far away, rushed back to churn in her gut, her jaw growing slack, the rush of saliva to her mouth as nausea threatened anew as she stared down at the pad and the dark lines of text. She couldn't focus properly on the letter; words, phrases popped out at her, seemingly at random, accusing.

_We believed in you without question. Now that I think about it, that's really a terrible thing to do to someone, isn't it?_

Twenty young asari, all looking to her to lead them out of the hell she brought them into. All trusting her. In their faces, the reflections of a thousand of priestesses, a billion believers, trillions of asari. All expecting her to show them the way, never once believing she could falter. She could not afford to be wrong.

_You tried to do a good thing, for good reasons..._.

And where had that led them? Where had it left her? Good intentions counted for so little.

_Their voices were in my head during the war. Part of me was glad, if you can believe that, to know I wasn't fighting shadows anymore. They come back to me in my sleep. Do you dream of them too?_

She did not need to sleep to hear them. She merely needed to close her eyes and listen. She need only look over her shoulder to see them. She could feel them now, breathing hot against her neck.

_The last time Liara wrote, she asked me to come and see you. I'm sorry, but I can't._

Liara had written to Shiala, asking her to come to them. She must have thought it might help. But Liara did not know. She could not have known. Benezia had kept so much from her.

It was getting harder and harder to breathe, her heart racing fit to burst.

_Knowing what you were, and what I was, and what we were together, I don't think I could bear to see what we both are now._

If Benezia was a broken thing now, what was Shiala? Had it left her a ruined shell too? One that woke, screaming, in the night? One that fled to lonely spaces for fear of what others certainly thought of her?

When she reached the end of the letter, she sat and stared at it for the longest time.

_I carved your name upon an_ ait'sta'tari _of stone with the others, when I heard of your loss. Perhaps now, with your return, it's time to return it to the sea._

I hope you understand.

Benezia could suddenly stand it no longer. She found herself on her feet, pushing back, away from the table and the words upon it so violently that the table itself rocked and shed some of its load, her chair teetering back momentarily on two legs to crash down behind her.

_I carved your name upon an_ ait'sta'tari _. It's time to return it to the sea. I hope you understand._

This was not  _right_. The letter from Shiala could not be real. Shiala was  _dead_. Benezia was certain of it. She had volunteered to go with Saren to Feros, and Benezia had never seen either of them again. She was dead, like all the others Benezia had led into that terrible place. Like Umbri, whose life Benezia had snuffed out with her own two hands, rather than see her linger on as a mindless, drooling shell. Like Adàrytha before her, who'd found the strength to turn her rifle on herself before she was lost completely.

_It's time to return it to the sea. I hope you understand._

Shiala was dead.

Wasn't she?

But Liara had made mention-

A cold shiver ran up her spine.

No, it didn't matter what Liara had said. This was  _wrong_. All wrong. Everything. Even the things that were right, on the surface, were twisted mockeries. Sickness lurking beneath every surface. Liara. Aethyta. Shiala. Lies and violence and rejection. The world couldn't be like this. It couldn't be.

She felt light-headed, as though she might faint. She covered her eyes with her hand to stop the room from spinning, her other pressed hard to her heart and the unbearable tightness there. It hurt to breathe, each breath coming faster, harsher than the last.

_You will never escape._

Sovereign  _knew_  her. More than eight hundred years old and she had been rendered less than a child beneath the press of its mind, unable to do anything but curl up into herself and cower until it turned its attentions elsewhere. All of her weaknesses, her fondest memories, her hopes, her fears and her desires had been laid bare. Had it found her, buried deep within herself, holding on to the faint hope of escape? Had it built a new prison for her? A world she might believe in, unaware, unresisting? It could have. It must have. Its anger could be terrible.

Bent almost double now, she gripped the edges of the table to steady herself until the cheap plastic of it bit deep into her palms. There was no pain, though, even when her nails buckled and bent back. There should have been pain. If she was here, if this was now, there would be pain. She relinquished her grip and held her hands, scored by deep, purple lines, up before her eyes and felt only the faintest of throbs. There should be pain. The warmth of the sun.

When had it started? What was the last thing that had been real? She had been shot - she straightened, her hand reflexively flying to her side to feel the raised scar there through the fabric. That seemed real. The fight with Liara and the Spectre - Kemy, Emeeka, Da'istha, gunned down one after the other. The smell of blood and hot metal and disinfectant in the chill air. The screaming of the Queen. The terrible pain in her head, her vision doubling as a spiderweb of cracks appeared and began to race along the glass walls of her sanctuary, her prison, as she fought to free herself, however briefly…

Her fingers moved to her chest, scrabbling and tearing at the cloth until the wound there was laid bare before her gaze. A neat hole that had been cut through her breast, through skin and fat and muscle, past the blood and bone and to lodge a bullet so close to her heart. A mortal wound. She had been dying, the life ebbing out of her with each breath. Relief and terror as the darkness rose to swallow her whole. That was real. That had to be. Didn't it?

Had she died, then? Was this her punishment? Not disgrace but  _damnation_? Not from Sovereign, but from the Goddess she had discarded a hundred and fifty years ago? Doomed to live half a life in the ruins of the city she had come to love? Eternally faced with the accusing eyes of those she had pledged to guide and protect and utterly failed?

No, not dead. Athame was a myth. She knew that. The beacon had left no room for doubt, as desperately as she had wished otherwise. It must be Sovereign. It knew of terror. It knew, too, that the greatest despair came from nurturing hope and then killing it moments before it reached full flower.  _It had found her._  It had found her again, in those last moments before death, and locked her away. Or… it had brought her back. She had seen it resurrect the dead, some of them days old. She could be one of those...  _things_. A demon, screaming in the night. It had shown them to her, knowing what it would make her. Its hatred was unimaginable. Disgusted by her, even as it had broken her and made her do what it wanted. Made her  _want_  to do such terrible things. Pleasure in death. In breaking the mind of another.

She stared down at her hands, again, watching them tremble with a distant fascination, watching the tremors spread up her arms and into the rest of her body. She could see claws, so easily, if she looked. Her gaze fell to her chest, her breasts, heavy, glistening with sudden sweat, the slate blue there underlaid with sickly grey. The scar there that bled black ichor when she touched it again and again and again, feeling only faint pressure. Darkness all around her, black spiderwebs creeping in at the edge of her vision. The pain in her head, growing with each laboured breath.

She had to free herself. Where was the way out? There must be a way out. There was still a chance. Even if she was one of those  _things_  now, she could at least end it. She could seek out the light. Find an end. But how?

She shoved the table out of the way as if it were nothing, less than nothing, it was nothing, sending it and the rest of its load flying. Soil and dust rained down upon her, choking her, shards of pottery leaping at her feet. Stumbling, tripping, her own feet clumsy beneath her, she struggled out, away from it, out of the darkness and into the light, flinching as it struck her eyes. There, as she cast about herself for a path to freedom she saw the walls, the ceiling, for what they really were:

Glass.


	24. Falere

Overthe decades, Falere had come to consider herself to be something of a connoisseur of silence.

The monastery was full of silences, if only you cared to listen for them. She'd had more than time enough to learn their names. There was the silence of deep thought and the silence of hard work. The silence of subterfuge and stealth, of daydream and inattention, of reprimand and reproach. The waiting silence and the tense silence; the welcoming and the despairing. The way those four came together to create the laden silences that rippled through the monastery in the wake of another death or new arrival.

Her favourite, though, was the one she shared- had _once_ shared with Rila. Comfortable, as warm and welcoming as the forbidden embraces they snuck, she could spend days on end in the company of her sister and never feel the need to say a word. What needed to be said, after so long with nothing but each other?

This new silence, though, the one she shared with Mother, was strange. It was at once fraught and begging be filled, but leaving Falere uncertain as to what new ways their world would shatter if either said but a single word. It was stranger still, in so many ways, to simply _be_ here, beside the one who'd birthed her, raised her and been forced to send her away. Beside this Justicar, who was Mother and yet not. Who had Mother's eyes, which betrayed everything her face and body and voice would not say, but who smelled of leather and gun polish instead of spiced perfume. Who sat, still and contained and quiet, instead of prowling with restless energy. Whose voice was soft and measured when it should have been raised in song or laughter, or to shout at the vid screen as her favourite skyball team betrayed her faith in them once more.

Had silence been a hard thing for Mother to learn, going into the service of her Code? Temple quiet had come naturally to Falere, youngest, smallest and most bookish of three. Father might have found it easy too, Falere favouring her in temperament, if not looks. But it was much harder to imagine Mother finding peace in the quiet. She had always been... bold. Loud. Larger than life.

Falere was on the verge of asking to that effect, for want of anything else to say, when she heard the sudden, sharp sound of ceramics shattering nearby, from back towards the direction they'd come. Mother heard it too, pausing mid-bite to listen, cocking her head slightly to one side, body tensing almost imperceptibly. When no further noise came they both relaxed. Things broke all of the time in the camp, and Falere hadn't gone a day yet without losing one of the suspended pots or planters, no matter how well she thought she'd fixed them into place. Another mess to clean.

"You've done well with all of this," Mother said, looking around at the greenhouses surrounding the small courtyard.

In truth, the 'courtyard' was little more than the junction of a few narrow alleyways, but someone had tried to make it at least slightly welcoming. A few battered chairs, where they sat, and a table raised up from the river mud on a square sheet of perforated steel. A swirl of light gravel in one corner above the sticky earth, and even sickly tree in a too-small pot, biotics glowing wanly. A few incense sticks planted around the edge of the patch of gravel suggested that Mother wasn't the only person using the area for meditation.

"It's come along better than I expected, actually," Falere admitted, though pleased by the praise. "We all spent time on the farms, but I've never really been noted for my green thumb."

Whatever reply Mother was going to make died on her lips as the sound of shattering glass reached them. They shared a glance as, after a slight delay, the sound came for the second time, and had both risen to their feet before the third reached them. Mother was gone from the courtyard a bare heartbeat later, Falere quickly falling behind, her dismay rising as there was a fourth, a fifth, more.

Sabotage.

The thought came almost as a relief, even as her heart sank, as though part of her had been waiting for it ever since she had arrived. Maybe she had. They'd been warned, all of them, more than once, that their reception outside of the monastery could be cold. That for every one of their people that offered kindness, a more would offer scorn. The stories from those who'd come back, after trying and failing to make new lives for themselves outside, had long ago convinced Falere it would not be worth the trouble of leaving home. People could be... irrational.

And yet, here she was, on Thessia anyway, because helping people was the sort of thing that monsters didn't do.

The sounds of destruction seemed to be coming from greenhouse three, where she'd been working this morning. Where, she realised with another stab of dismay, she'd left Matriarch Benezia. The Matriarch had looked so drawn and frail, and seemed so distracted that Falere had to wonder if there was any truth to the rumours even she had heard that the Matriarch was deathly ill as a result of whatever the Reapers were supposed to have done to her. She certainly hadn't seemed very well the day Mother had brought Falere to this place. Mother had later explained that it was not uncommon for those who felt they'd wronged the community to become deeply emotional and seek extreme penalties when encountering a Justicar; it should not be held against the Matriarch. And Mother's word was, quite literally, law.

Falere had barely seen the Matriarch since that first meeting, save the morning spent showing Falere around the camp. She had been nice enough then, but quiet, her questions, unusual for an outsider, not about Falere's condition or monastery life, but about her - her interests, her likes and dislikes - all steering carefully away from any topics that might lead them back to the war. But then the Matriarch had visited the monastery at least once times since Falere had been there, scattering herself and her acolytes, some nervous, some not, in amongst the residents in the dining hall. It had been nice to learn, after the initial moment of doubt upon seeking her out as a guide to the camp, that the small kindnesses then had not been an act.

Falere entered the greenhouse at a run, and nearly collided with Mother, who'd come to a halt just inside. It was easy to see why: Matriarch Benezia was at the far end of the room, leaning over one of the rows of _eivi_ that Falere and her occasional, barely-willing assistants had carefully coaxed forth. The side of her head and crests were streaked with blood and dirt, her jacket ripped and the shirt beneath it torn and hanging half-open to reveal much of her right breast and another bleeding wound there.

Falere gasped and started forward, but Mother put a restraining hand on her shoulder.

"Wait," Mother said, letting her hand fall to the gun at her hip. "Matriarch Benezia, what has happened here? Were you attacked?"

The Matriarch ignored them, even when Mother started moving towards her, light on her feet, biotics charged, scanning the building for other occupants.

"They must have fled," Falere said, following hesitantly in Mother's wake, doing her own survey of the building.

Matriarch Benezia herself was breathing hard, not so much leaning against the bench as clinging to it as if it were the only thing capable of supporting her. Falere's plants and vats appeared to be untouched, to her relief, and the pipes she had so laboriously hung, plumbed and sealed were still in place - and still leaking despite her best efforts. But the rows of windows behind the Matriarch were full of empty frames, allowing in a cold draft.

Had the Matriarch frightened them off? Whoever had destroyed the windows must have seen Falere leave, and then entered, not expecting there to be anyone inside. The Matriarch must have surprised them. And then, Falere realised with a wave of outrage that washed away the burgeoning relief, they'd attacked her instead.

Who could do such a thing!? It was one thing to smash windows-

But then the Matriarch abruptly straightened and shook her head, as if to clear it.

"No. I will find a way."

The words were barely audible, and Falere had little time to ponder their meaning before the Matriarch was poised before an intact pane of glass. She reached out to touch it, almost wonderingly, and at that moment Falere realised that there was blood on the broken panes, on the shards on the ground.

This was... this was Benezia's work? The attempted destruction of everything that Falere had worked towards here? Falere would never have expected Matriarch Benezia T'Soni, of anyone in the camp, to harbour ill-will towards her. Not when Benezia had sought out her company today. Not when she had been courteous and engaging and unafraid. Not when her own daughter had asked Falere to come here. Why would she do such a thing? How could she?

The Matriarch's hand, wreathed in sudden biotic energy, drew back and struck. The tempered pane cracked, her palm leaving a smear of blood.

"No!" Falere burst out, rushing forward.

But once again Mother was quicker, already moving even before the blow had been struck, interposing herself neatly between the two of them. Her hand shot out to catch the other matriarch's arm, holding it in place with an almost contemptuous ease before Benezia could strike again.

"Stop this," she said levelly. "What has happened here?"

Matriarch Benezia looked over her shoulder at them incredulously, as if registering their presence for the first time. Her eyes widened, and she managed to jerk her arm free of Mother's hold.

"I have to leave," she whispered, backing away. "I can't stay. You can't keep me here."

Mother's eyes narrowed at that, a frown creasing her features, and she raised her head, squaring her shoulders, her body suddenly tense in a way it hadn't been before. Ready for a fight, Falere realised with a start of dread. Did she honestly expect one? From _Matriarch Benezia_?

But then Falere would not have expected the Matriarch to attack the greenhouse.

"The Code compels me to prevent you from causing any further damage to this building for the sake of the community," Mother said calmly. "And to ensure that you answer to them for the damage you have already caused." She stepped forward. "I ask that you come with me peacefully."

There was an implied threat in the words, Falere realised, that turned the request into a demand, however calmly delivered. The Matriarch saw it too, backing away, biotics flaring defensively.

"You can't keep me here!" she repeated. "I won't become one of those things! I won't. I won't! It's important! Someone has to!"

Her voice only rose in volume and pitch, taking on an almost hysterical edge. Almost hysterical, like Ivoli had been, before she'd tried to jump from the roof of the belltower in the fiftieth year of Falere's residence. Very much like N'Sia, who'd been held in solitary confinement for more than three decades in her home village before being discovered by a census-taker. Half-wild, half-terrified, deathly pale and far too thin, she talked to thin air rather than people, and sometimes screamed or struck out if you touched her. Falere had sat with her, once or twice, on some of her calmer days, torn between pity, compassion and horror that 'civilised' people could do something so terrible to someone whose crime had been to not realise what she was until it was too late. N'Sia hadn't even tried to run when her first attempted meld had left her partner comatose.

Falere glanced at the blood-splattered ground, the broken glass and then at Benezia: wild-eyed, bloodied, her clothing in disarray, still trying to put distance between herself and Mother. The wound on her chest came from four deep scratches.

"Mother," Falere said quietly, stepping forward to touch Mother's arm, to stop her from advancing again. "Wait. _Please_. I don't think she's," she struggled momentarily for a suitable adjective, " _well_. Force might not help."

Words had helped Ivoli come to terms with her new life. They might even have helped N'Sia too, one day, had the healing not taken more time that the Reapers had left her.

"Mmm," Mother agreed, coming to a halt, not taking her eyes off the other matriarch. "Perhaps."

"We can talk her down. Or go get Dr. T'Soni-"

"Stop TALKING!" Benezia shouted at them, covering her ears with her hands and seeming to curl in on herself, eyes squeezed tightly shut. Her voice dropped immediately, almost to a whisper. "I don't want to listen anymore. Not about them. It's too late."

She continued to back away from them both, until she reached the side of the greenhouse and struck the wall behind her. She recoiled away from it with a whimper, so violently that she stumbled, and almost fell. Then, before either Falere or Mother could react, she flung out her hand, sending a wave of biotic force rolling out with it.

The wall didn't so much shatter as explode outwards in a thunderous crash, as though a bolt of lightning has struck home before their very eyes. A score of carefully salvaged and assembled windows were gone in an instant, filling the air with splinters of glass, the frames and steel supports buckling and bending and blowing clean out from the force of it.

Benezia glanced between the ruined, empty wall and her outstretched, seemingly dazed, panting, visibly swaying on her feet. A look of bewilderment crossed her face, and she turned in an uncertain circle, staring around at the rest of the building, the walls, the ceiling, the plants as if she were seeing them all for the first time. Falere didn't dare move, holding her breath as Benezia's gaze darted around the rest of the greenhouse, hoping beyond hope that it was done, that whatever... madness had taken the Matriarch had passed. The hope was short-lived: a new look, one of determination, appeared on Benezia's face, biotic power pooling in her suddenly clenched fist.

"No," Falere heard herself whisper again in horror.

One wall they could rebuild. More than that, though, might bring the entire structure down. If that happened everything she'd worked to build here could be lost.

"Enough," Mother barked.

Her own biotics flared and, with a flick of her wrist, she captured the other matriarch in the strongest stasis field Falere had ever seen. But it was barely enough. The field warped and bulged outwards unnaturally, struggling to contain the forces being brought to bear within. Benezia's face contorted in fear and fury, eyes blazing white.

Still without taking her eyes off her captive, her voice laced with sudden strain, Mother said: "Falere, there is a doctor somewhere in the camp. Find her immediately. I will keep her contained until you return."

"Where should I look? I don't know-"

Mother's eyes darted towards her; the momentary, tiny lapse in concentration was all it took. Benezia struck instantly, shattering the stasis field in a blinding explosion of biotic force that overturned benches, ruptured pipes and sent still more glass exploding outwards. Falere didn't even have time to scream as she was knocked off her feet, rolling up hard against an overturned table. She curled up into a ball as she was pelted by flying and falling debris, drenched by a sudden spray of cold water.

It took only seconds, she knew, for the worst of it to pass, but it seemed like she lay there for hours, dazed and senseless. Colour returned only slowly to the world, coming in dribs and drabs as she blinked against white-hot after-image. Purple blood: her own, she realised distantly, touching her hand to her cheek and feeling it come away sticky. The green and blue of her plants, the dark, rich browns of damp soil the grey of river mud. Shining silver steel and red rust.

Coughing against a lung-full of dust, she rolled over, onto her back. There was a rainbow, when she looked up, the sun momentarily peaking through the clouds and the gaping holes in the roof to set colours dancing upon the spray from a broken pipe. She stared at the sight, uncomprehending, struggling to make sense of such simple beauty amidst such destruction. It seemed... incongruous.

Sound came next, beyond the high-pitched ringing in her ears. Water; the hiss of a high-pressure spray, the rapid _plink-plink_ of small droplets striking metal, the steady gurgle and glug of a large leak, somewhere. Glass, tinkling and chiming, crunching and grinding against itself. Creaking metal, groaning under strain. And a voice. Not Mother's. Benezia. Shouting. Where was Mother? Was she alright?

"I will leave this place!" the Matriarch shout. "I won't let you take everything!"

The air smelled of earth and ozone. The wake of a thunderstorm.

She'd always loved thunderstorms.

Using the table as leverage, Falere pulled herself slowly to her feet. Her head swam with each smallest motion, and her vision blurred, doubled. Had she struck her head? Nausea rose hard in the wake of the thought, bile in the back of her throat with the dust. Wasn't that what happened with a concussion?

When focus finally returned, it was to see Benezia advancing upon Mother. Benezia's corona leapt and crackled blue around her, her eyes still blazing. Mother was down on one knee before her, clearly dazed from the energy backlash, but with sense enough, at least, to hold up a barrier. It was just as well: with each step forward, the Matriarch sent a wave of biotic force aimed directly at her, blow after blow battering at the barrier and sending all manner of debris flying. Tables and steel struts flung about as if they were a child's playthings. The air full of lethal glass.

"Stop! Please!" Falere called out before she could think any better of it. Her head was still ringing; when she let go of the table, she swayed on her feet. Tears stung her eyes. "She hasn't done anything to harm you!"

Benezia wheeled around to face her; nothing in her expression hinted at recognition. Or restraint.

"Please," Falere said again, taking an unconscious step backwards.

Her foot slipped and skidded out from underneath her; she went down onto one knee and felt the shock of the impact ripple up through her body, driving away the last vestiges of befuddlement.

"Please..?" Benezia said. "Please stop?!" Her voice cracked and broke at the last, and her biotic halo abruptly faded, her eyes pale blue and pleading. "I wanted to stop. So much. I begged. I _pleaded_." She laughed abruptly, hysterically. "I even _prayed_ , for all the good it would do. But I couldn't. Not until it was too late. I couldn't protect you."

"Protect me?" Falere said carefully, uncertain. She regained her feet slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements. "From what?"

Benezia, though, ignored her question. Her expression went from manic to morose in a heartbeat.

"You shouldn't _be_ here either!" she complained brokenly. "I saw you die. I-" the word was closer to a sob, "Oh Goddess, I thought it was a _mercy_!"

Out of the corner of her eye, Falere could see Mother getting back to her feet, dropping her barrier. She was bleeding from her nose and a half-dozen cuts to her scalp and sternum, her maroon armour soaking wet and splattered with mud to go with the blood. Falere stepped slightly to the side, to better bring her into view. The Matriarch turned with her, and turned again as Falere took another small step, until Benezia had her back fully to Mother.

"But I'm not dead," she replied as soothingly as she could manage. "See? I'm just a little bit, um, bruised."

It was evidently the wrong thing to have said: Benezia's corona flared up again, her eyes wild.

"You are _dead_!" Benezia insisted. "I felt... I had to do it. The first. That's why you're here, isn't it? Isn't it!?"

She stepped forward, one hand raised to point accusingly, the other, at her side, glowing with biotic energy. Falere took a step backwards, and nearly stumbled again, her calf striking an overturned algae vat, cutting off her immediate escape.

"Taunting me," Benezia continued, angry once more. "You deserved better. You all did. I can't change that. But I can stop this... _desecration_. I will end it here. No more."

Benezia dropped the first hand and raised the second, preparing to strike. Wishing to the Goddess above - and not for the first time - that she'd been allowed to keep up her biotic practice when she'd joined the monastery, Falere brought up her barrier. It shimmered weakly, malformed; it would be no match for the Matriarch, who had already overpowered Mother, a Justicar, trained and sworn.

Ironic, really, that, out of all of the camp and its upturned noses, dark looks and hostile guardians, she faced death at the hands of someone she was increasingly certain didn't actually bear her any ill will at all.

But it wasn't meant to be - thank Athame, it wasn't meant to be. Mother was upon Benezia before she could deliver the promised strike, a few quick, silent strides launching a tackle that took Benezia in the small of the back and bore her hard to the ground. The two Matriarchs rolled together at Falere's feet, struggling in the puddle of water and mud. Benezia managed to twist around to wind up on her back, kicking out in an effort to break free of Mother's hold, lashing out with wild fists. It was to no avail, though. Mother ignored those few blows that landed true as if they were if no consequence and methodically used her superior weight, strength and position to pin Benezia to the earth, a leg upon her chest, a knee at her throat.

In the shell of her ruined greenhouse, amidst the broken glass and dying plants, Falere stood, frozen to the spot, as her Mother increased the weight she applied to Benezia's chest, slowly crushing the life out of someone Falere had respected, had perhaps even hoped might be a friend, of sorts, in this dreadful place. With every second that passed, Benezia's struggles grew weaker, and the desperation and terror writ large across her face more pronounced. She clawed at Mother's leg with bloodied fingers.

This was the killer kneeling before her, Falere realised asbruptly. The Justicar who'd hunted Mirala for hundreds of years and then killed her in cold blood with her own two hands. Who'd seen no way to exist in a galaxy where Falere was free. Who'd put a gun to her own head in the place where Rila had died to save them both.

"Mother, no," she said, finally finding her voice again. "She doesn't know what she's doing."

When the Justicar didn't respond, Falere nerved herself and stepped forward, moving in close enough to touch, if she wanted to, kneeling down herself to look the other asari in the eyes.

"Please," she said, and let the tears fall. "There's been too much death already."

Even as she said the words, Benezia arched and twisted one more time, and then went still, body slack, head lolling backwards.

The Justicar arose and regarded Falere, her eyes cold, her face expressionless. Benezia took in a sudden, gasping breath, but did not wake.

"She will live."

* * *

**a/n:** Real life: _what_ a kick in the quad. Thanks to all who've left feedback, and stuck around reading this thing after so long between updates. Much love to you all.


	25. Aethyta

Aethtya called things like she saw them.  She wasn't good at pulling punches, and she'd never had the knack for mincing words.  She was famous for speaking her mind, in certain circles.  Or infamous, depending on who you talked to.  Benezia had always…  Well, with the benefit of hindsight, Aethyta had to figure she'd always found it equal parts amusing and infuriating.  But you got to a point in your life where it just wasn't worth beating around the damn bush.  Better to know where you stood.  Where everyone stood.  Why bother with ambiguity?  It just caused problems in the end.

But when the kid said "This is all my fault, isn't it?" she hesitated, weighing her words carefully.

Liara was her youngest.  The youngest of fou- three, now.  Barely more than a babe in arms in the greater scheme of things.  And that was her _mother_ in there, being put back together after having had some sort of an... episode.   Details about exactly had happened were light on the ground - the fucking Justicar and her brat had been and gone before Aethyta had arrived - but it sounded an awful lot like what had happened the day that particular pair had arrived, only worse.

In a way, it could be seen as Liara's fault, she supposed.  The whole thing with thawing Benezia out had been her idea.  But she'd only wanted her mother back.  That was natural.  Hell, Aethyta'd been about Liara's age when her own parents had offed each other.  There had been times, particularly in that first, horrible century, when Aethyta thought she'd give anything, _do_ anything to have them back, consequences be damned. 

Knowing that, knowing at least some of what had happened to Benezia, Aethyta should have had the sense to put the breaks on thawing her out, at least until things were better.  Until they had more _time_. Aethyta was supposed to be, well, not _wise_ , because she'd met plenty of people who were living proof that surviving a thousand years wasn't any guarantee of common sense, but she should at least be experienced enough to predict a true shitstorm before it hit.

So, why hadn't she?  Why hadn't she _stopped_ , for once in her life, and thought about what would happen next?  Consequences, repercussions, all that.  It wasn't like she was incapable of it.  But she'd been hurt and shocked and so _angry_ with both of them for lying to her. 

Anger was easy.  But it was dumb as fuck too, most of the time.  Made you say stupid shit.  Made you _do_ stupid shit.

Guilt set itself as a hard rock in her chest, a roiling storm in her gut.  Had that helped set this off?  Even if Aethyta'd never loosed the blow, the threat of it had been there.  Hell, _grabbing_ her had been enough, really, hadn't it?  Benezia's eyes had rolled back up on her head and she'd kind of, _gone away_ again, for a few seconds. Until Aethyta had kissed her, in that drunken, stupid way that made everything seem like a good idea.

Benezia had said that she'd understood, then, that she knew Aethyta was hurting, that she'd even forgiven her for her actions.  But it wouldn't be the first time Nezzy had lied and said that something Aethyta had said or done didn't bother her as much as it really did. 

Hindsight, again, suggested that too much of their relationship had been built on lies like that.  Benezia, and the amused smiles and tolerance that hid frustration and anger at Aethyta’s militancy.  Aethyta's own frustration and anger and resentment at always playing the number two, and the laughter she used to chase those thoughts away.  Agreeing to downplay their relationship in public, but wondering, in the dark of night, if secrecy wasn’t for politics but because some part of Benezia was ashamed of letting a roughneck like Aethyta capture her heart, share her bed, father her only child.

"It's not your fault, kid," Aethyta said slowly.  "And even if it was, it'd be a lot more mine than yours."

Liara came to an abrupt halt in her pacing.  She placed her hand against the door leading further into the medical centre, as if she could feel whatever was happening on the other side through it.  After a few seconds more, she let her hand drop and turned back to face Aethyta.  Her shoulders were slumped, the good side of her face lined with far too much worry for someone her age.

"Bringing her here was my idea," Liar said quietly, shaking her head.  "My... thoughtlessness.  I would have done it even if you weren't here."

Aethyta sighed and ran her hands over her crests.

"And I'm the one who brought Samara here," Liara continued, starting to pace again, her body tense, movements tight. "And I haven't been there for her, like I promised I'd be.  I-"

"Siddown, kid," Aethyta interrupted, patting the spot on the bench next to her.

"But-"

" _Sit_.  _Down_."

The firmer command was reluctantly obeyed, and Liara took up the seat beside her, folding her hands in her lap, hunching in on herself to stare down at them.  Aethyta studied her in profile for a long, silent minute, noting the dark circle beneath her eye and the grey undertone to her skin, concealed by an inexpertly applied layer of foundation.  Stress lines and fine scars marred her otherwise unmarked brow and cheek, drawing her mouth as taut on the good side as the bad.

She really was a stubborn little dumbass like her father, wasn't she?  Prone to running headlong into her next big battle with no plan except what she made up on the fly.  Prone to picking fights with the high and mighty, to not knowing her place.  But her mother's daughter too, with her mother's big heart, and her mother's belief that capability brought responsibility.

"If this is anyone's fault," Aethyta said, inwardly surprised by how firm and authoritative she'd managed to make her voice, "it's the Reapers.  Not yours.  Not mine.  Not hers.  Theirs.  They were the ones that fucked with her head.  They were the ones who did all... this," she waved vaguely around the doctor’s little office and its battered desk and stash of salvaged supplies, as if they could see through the walls to the devastation beyond.  "Not you."

When Liara didn't make any move to acknowledge her, Aethyta reached over and cupped her chin, applying pressure until Liara was forced to turn her head and meet her eyes.  Aethyta took care to be gentle in both touch and voice.  She'd seen the supressed winces at sharp movements, and could see, now, the tears that threatened.  Up this close, she could see, too, the fine detail of the scarring, all the little peaks and valleys of it, and the lines of transparent tape holding the patch in place over an empty socket.

"Ok, so you and me haven't been helping her out as much as we could've," Aethyta admitted, feeling as much as hearing her voice choke up a little.  "And yeah, maybe we should've left her be in stasis for a few more years, until things got properly settled here.  But we can't change any of that.  What's done is done.  We can only decide that we're gonna do things differently going forward.  Do things better.  Blaming yourself for what happened ain't gonna help with that at all."

"You don't understand," Liara said and shook her head, brushing Aethyta's hand away.

"So, help me then."

Liara folded her hands in her lap for a time, silent and staring at them, before returning her focus to Aethyta.

"I could have stopped all this from happening," she whispered and then looked away again. "We had a chance to end the war before Thessia fell.  And I messed it up."

Aethyta said nothing, sitting, watching as the kid ran her good hand over her bad, rubbing almost absently at the rough, scarred skin, circling the shiny tips of the shortened knuckles.  Aethyta had learned the art of silence early on, and mastered it when tending bar.  There was a knack for spotting when someone needed to spill their guts to a handy, non-judgemental stranger, and Liara had all the signs.  Aethyta couldn't be the stranger bit, not to her own daughter, but she could at least provide the ear.

It only took a few minutes to wait her out.

"There was... an artefact,” Liara said slowly, as if the words were coming from a great distance away.  “Here, in Armali.  In the Grand Temple of Athame. It was supposed to provide us with details on the Catalyst, for the Crucible.  We arrived to recover it the very day the Reapers invaded.

"It was… a nightmare.  More husks and brutes than I've seen anywhere outside of Hammer.  The Armali Council had done so little to prepare.  Civilians were dying by the thousand every minute, and our forces were being decimated.  Maybe they thought we'd have more warning, or that the Reapers were too busy with the other races, but-"

She stopped abruptly, a flash of anger, or maybe contempt, crossing her face.

"We eventually fought our way through to the Temple. It was just me, Shepard and Javik by the end. Javik, the Prothean we found on New Eden. When we got into the temple-"

Liara stopped abruptly again.  This time though, she looked up at Aethyta, her eye wide and worried. 

"You can't tell anyone this,” she said, earnestly.  “I need your word."

Aethyta bit back her initial, sarcastic response.  Secrets had been her stock in trade for almost half her life now, since before Liara T'Soni had even been a twinkle in her mother's eye.  But this wasn't about Aethyta’s own ego.  Reassurance was the order of the day.  And anyway, what could be so bad, in a temple? 

But, then again, it'd have to be something _big,_ if you'd be willing to risk the galaxy's only surviving Prothean on recovering it.

Especially when you were building a giant Prothean doomsday weapon from ancient plans and were desperate for translators.

Shepard had risked the galaxy's last Prothean in a hot zone, and taken little miss Prothean fangirl along for the ride.  To a temple, of all places.  But priestesses were _good_ at keeping secrets, for generation after generation, weren't they?  Benezia'd said so herself, and she should have known.  They eventually turned things into ritual, and ritual was almost never questioned.  You do something long enough, and you forget why you were doing it in the first place, just that it needs to be done.  And you don’t question it.

Liara was watching her with concern when Aethyta looked back up at her.

"Was it a beacon?" Aethyta asked before she could second-guess her instincts.  "Working Prothean tech?"

"In the statue of Athame herself," Liara confirmed, then added accusingly, "You knew?!"

Aethyta shook her head quickly, not missing the burgeoning look of betrayal replacing Liara's surprise.

"No.  I didn't _know_.  But you hang around long enough, you hear things," she replied, thinking back. "Lot of old, old rumours conspiracy nuts get their rocks off to.  You'd've heard a few yourself, I bet.  'High Command has a black-ops breeding programme to try to make asari who can meld across rooms'.  'A cabal of Matriarchs have got a three-thousand year plan to take over the galaxy by fucking.

She paused and continued more quietly, for emphasis.

"There's a working Prothean beacon somewhere on the homeworld.'”  She shrugged.  “I never really gave it much thought until now."

Aethyta thought about it, now.  A Prothean beacon.  Hidden in a statue in what, if she remembered rightly, was once one of the holiest places on Thessia, if you were that way inclined.  Hidden in plain sight. 

But that's what you'd do, wouldn't you, with a secret that large?  That old?  Build some sort of a construct around it.  No, wait, you wouldn't build it deliberately.  It'd grow naturally, like it did with the hanar.  A beacon, even only a partially functioning one, could really warp a culture.  A religion or two would grow up around this artefact of the gods - and Protheans _would_ be gods, to ancient asari - and grow strong. 

Now, everybody knew that if you touched a working beacon unprepared and you stood a better than ninety-nine percent chance of having your brain completely fried.  But, maybe, just _maybe_ , if you learned to prepare your mind in the right way, you could have a 'divine revelation' instead and pull some useful ideas out of the thing.  Temples to Athame had been centres of learning, back in the day.  And religion would actually be just the thing to pass along the tools needed to have those revelations, all the meditation and reflection and junk.  Benezia's mind had always be so neat and orderly, her sense of self strong-

"It's not a conspiracy theory," Liara was saying, earnestly.  "It's real."

"I'm not doubting you," she replied, even as her mind raced with the implications.

How long had Benezia known?  Not when they'd met, Aethyta was sure, even though she'd been working on her great treatise at that stage. 

"Then do you realise what it means? Our history is a lie!”  Liara got to her feet, propelled back into motion.  “The Protheans interfered with our development.  They _experimented_ on us!  And then, when they left us, we used the beacon to advance!  And we concealed that from-"

But hadn't Nezzie had a kind of funny turn back around, oh, what their sixtieth anniversary?  She'd gone to Armali for a series of meetings with the Councillor and a dozen other bigwigs while Aethyta herself was out cleaning up some mess or another for High Command in the Terminus.  And when they'd both gotten home, Benezia had been... withdrawn.  Moody.  And when they'd made love, there'd been a new wall in Benezia's mind, and a profound and odd sense of loss, a grief that had never quite gone away.  She'd refused to talk about it at all, which had only ended up upsetting Aethyta, because they'd been _bonded_ , damnit, and burdens were supposed to be shared. 

They'd had their first really big fight sometime around then too, hadn't they?

"-all of our achievements as a species!" Liara continued, clearly warming to her tirade.  “We’ll never know what we did for ourselves-“

Yeah, the kid had a right to be mad.  But she was mad, but for all the wrong reasons.  Who cared if their people had used Prothean tech to get a leg up?  _That_ wasn't the issue.  How many priestesses before Benezia had their faith stripped from them by a hidden, ugly truth? 

"- and we’ll -"

"So?"

Her interjection visibly drew the kid up short.

“’So’?  What do you mean, ' _so'_!?"

Aethyta rolled her eyes.

"Pretty much every species used Prothean tech to get ahead," she said.  "The turians did it.  Pretty sure the salarians did too.  Everybody knows that the hanar did, and the elcor couldn’t even have made it off their planet without that catchment of eezo they found.  Hell, even your humans wouldn't have been here if it weren't for that archive on Marsh or whatever it's called."

"But they were all honest about it!  We _lied_ and said we'd done it on our own!"

"You really think that the other species were all completely, utterly, one hundred and ten percent honest about what the old tech found?”  Aethyta had to laugh, unable to keep the bitter edge from it.  “ _Come on_ kid.  Every government has its secrets.  Then they hire people like me to steal them from each other."

"We're supposed to be better than that!"                                      

"In what universe?"

"This one! It's against the laws we helped write!  Unsanctioned possession of Prothean technology-"

"-is all kinds of illegal. Yeah, I know, I know.  But that's why you get into a position where you get to make and enforce the rules in the first place.  And if it helps us keep a step ahead of everyone else, well..."

She shrugged. 

And when Liara stared at her like she'd grown two heads, she sighed.  That's what it was to be young, wasn't it?  Idealism not yet fettered by hundreds of years of learning that the universe wasn't good, let alone fair.  No use arguing with that.

Aethyta pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Look, we can fight about this later.  What happened once you found the beacon?"

Liara scowled at her, and then deflated, all at once.  Her shoulders, squared for the argument, fell inwards, and she took the seat beside Aethyta again.

"Cerberus had some sort of tracking system on-board the Normandy that the Alliance hadn't been able to find during the retrofit. They actually beat us to the beacon, but they didn't know what they were looking for once they got there.  Their best agent, Kai Leng, hid in the Temple and waited until we'd activated it before attacking us.

"I was distracted. I just… couldn't get it out of my head.”  Her good hand clenched into a fist in her lap, one as tight as her grimace.  “So much of what'd I'd believed about our people was... _wrong_.  Lies.  And Javik kept goading me and _goading_ me in that _voice_ of his.  I sometimes think he was just happy to see someone feel as lost as he was.  And part of me was - hah! - I was worried about destroying the artefacts in the temple.  As if they actually still _meant_ something.

“Between all of that, I let myself get into a position where Leng could take out Javik and me at once, which bought him enough time enough to call in his air support.  They fired rockets and the floor collapsed. Shepard fell through.

"When I got back to my feet, I could see Leng leaving with the information from the beacon. I could have stopped him.  Leng was always over-confident, and he thought we were all down for the count.  One stasis field would have been enough. The gunship couldn't have fired without hitting Leng, and Javik could have come in from the side and killed him, or at least stolen the VI back.  But all I could think about was Shepard.  I could see her clinging to the side of the chasm.  I... I had to save her.

"So I let Leng get away.  Instead of ending the war, I let it drag on for almost two more months.   Billions of people died because I made the wrong call." Liara's voice cracked and broke.  "Billions of _our_ people died, because I couldn't bear to lose Shepard again.  And Thessia became... this.

The promised tears began to fall, hot and fast.

"Hey.  Hey now," Aethyta said, drawing her daughter into a hug.  Liara didn't resist, turning instead to bury her face in Aethyta's shoulder.

Muffled, Liara’s voice quavered; Aethyta could hear her fighting for self-control and losing.

"Shepard always said that the war was bigger than one person.  She was right.  If I hadn't been so _stupid_ and _selfish_ -"

“You're not selfish," Aethyta interrupted firmly.  "And you sure as hell aren't stupid."

"Then why do I keep making the same mistakes?  Not just with Shepard, but with Mother and Feron and-"

Aethyta sighed and laid her cheek against Liara's brow.  Liara trembled in her embrace, linking her own arms around Aethyta's waist. 

What did you say to something like that?  To a kid who’d had the fate of the galaxy resting on her shoulders? And she had to be worried sick, Liara, behind those tears.  For a lover - her first at that - that she'd left behind on a hospital bed and spoke of like she was afraid she was already dead.  For a mother, who she'd nearly lost already.  Worried enough to seek comfort from an absent father, someone she wouldn't have known from a hole in the ground even a year before.

A thousand years old, and Aethyta was lost for words. 

She tried anyway.

"Caring for people's not a bad thing, kiddo," she said carefully.  "And wanting to keep the people you do care about alive doesn't make you stupid.  It might make you do the odd stupid thing but-" 

She stopped abruptly.  That wasn't going to be a productive line of thought.  She tried again. 

"Liara, I learned a long time ago that you can't spend your time obsessing about might-have-beens.  You say you coulda stopped that Leng bastard.  Well, maybe you could've.  But maybe the gunship woulda opened fire, anyway, even if it meant hitting Leng.  Hell, if the data was that important, that's what I woulda done, if I were the pilot.  Or maybe Leng would've overpowered you and the Prothean, even if you got the jump on him.  He must've been one hell of a fighter to take the three of you on alone.  Maybe you would've died instead, and Shepard too.  And then what would have happened?  We'd all be dead right now, that's what.  Reaper chow."

"But I-"

"But _nothing_.  You can't know which way the other cards would've fallen if you'd played the hand you were dealt a bit differently.  You made a hard call in a bad situation, and the fact that we're sitting here having this talk tells me it was the right one."

Liara pulled away, finally, scrubbing at her eye.

"But with Mother-"

"You know I was about your age when my parents killed each other."

"I'd... heard that, yes."

"I tell most people about the bender I went on because of it.  My inheritance was my dad's shotgun and what was left of my mom's savings after covering dad's gambling debts.  Blew it all having one big, decade-long party.  Ended up in a lotta gutters.  Was lucky I didn't end up in a morgue instead.

"But the point I'm trying to make here is that, when they died, I'd have given _anything_ to have them back. Or stop them from doing it in the first place.  I just didn't have the means." 

She cleared her throat, which had gotten unreasonably thick again.  Even now, it still hurt.  900 years of knowing that... well, that the fact that they'd fought on different sides of a stupid war centuries before she’d been born had been more important to them than she was.

"Hell, I'd probably even do it now, but that'd be just to bash their damn skulls together for being so fucking stupid."

Liara took one of her hands in her own and squeezed it.

"Thanks, dad."

"Anytime, kiddo."

Liara's eye was completely dry by the time the door opened to admit the doctor, a midnight-blue matron with stripes of white banding her crests.  An intricate bonding tattoo of the same colour adorned her left wrist, spiralling down the back of her hand.

Liara found her feet quickly, Aethyta only a fraction of a second behind.  The matron glanced her over briefly before returning her attention to Liara.

"Doctor T'Soni," she said, and there was a long story of fatigue behind it.  "I'd hoped we'd have a chance to talk again under better circumstances."

"As did I.  Doctor, this is Aethyta, my father.  Benezia's bondmate."

The doctor looked Aethyta over without any evidence of real interest, and dismissed her with a small shrug.

"Fine," she replied shortly.  "Matriarch Aethyta, I'm Doctor Isthi Il'Danta.  I normally specialise in infectious diseases but," she smiled, an expression utterly devoid of humour, and threw herself down in the chair behind the desk, "just lately I've had to broaden my horizons."

She could have been Queen Queirezia for all Aethyta cared.

"It's just Aethyta.  So, what's the deal here, doc?"

"I was actually hoping you could tell me," Il'Danta said. She pulled a battered datapad from the clutter on the desk and held a stylus poised expectantly above it.

"What do you mean?" Liara replied, confusion evident in her expression.  "You treated her."

"What I've _done_ is sealed up the worst of the lacerations with _celerisin_ and medigel.  I've set her wrist and stabilised her sternum, and I was even able to go in and repair most of the damage to her trachea and larynx - but I wouldn't expect her to be giving any more lengthy speeches anytime soon.  Pity, because she was always an interesting one to listen to.  Had a real way with words." 

She paused and gave another minute shrug. 

"The rest I've cleaned, but it'll have to heal on its own.  We're too short on supplies.

"But even," she continued, her eyes hard as she looked between Aethyta and Liara, "if I _did_ have everything necessary to treat all of her injuries, I'm still left with the question of why she has them in the first place.  Respected matriarchs, in my experience, do not randomly attack Justicars while experiencing what sounds like some sort of a persecution delusion."

"What do you mean, a 'persecution delusion'?" Aethyta asked, her heart sinking.

"Justicar Samara said," here Il'Danta glanced down at the datapad again, "that Benezia was acting irrationally and seemed to believe that Samara was helping an unnamed entity hold her captive.  Her primarily desire appeared to be escaping."

"Oh," Liara said quietly.  She sank slowly back down onto her seat.  "On Noveria, when Mother was fighting the indoctrination, she described it as being trapped."

"Honestly, I thought 'indoctrination' was just Alliance 'watch your neighbour' propaganda," Il’Danta replied.  "It's real?"

"As real as the Reapers themselves," Liara continued, holding Il'Danta's gaze.  "And the damage it does is real.  If it goes on long enough, it can destroy minds completely. We encountered salarians on Virmire who were little more than husks after just a few weeks of exposure."

"I see.  And how long was your mother exposed?"

"I don't know.  Months, at least.  Possibly years." 

"Years?" Aethyta interrupted, horrified.

"It's hard to pinpoint when she was first exposed," Liara said, looking at her guiltily.  "I think it must have been before she decided to go and try to guide Saren away from his destructive path."

"You just said those salarians were husks after just a few weeks!"

"Saren was exposed for more than a decade, as far as we could work out, and retained most of his faculties right up until the end.  He convinced Soveriegn that he was more useful as an intelligent agent than a shell, so it tried to limit the damage.  I think it was the same with Benezia.  I thought...  I thought that, because of that, and because she broke free for a while, she'd be alright."

When the doctor spoke again, her voice was almost gentle.

"Are there any treatments?"

The kid shook her head, and Aethyta's heart sank another little bit.

"Not that I'm aware of.  It was almost impossible to detect until it was too late.”

"Do you have any data, then?  Studies?  Anything at all I can use as a reference?"

"Some.  A neuroscientist worked for Saren studying indoctrination, and was given conditional amnesty by High Command.  I have some of her research.  Unfortunately, she became indoctrinated herself and destroyed much of her own work before-" Liara stopped abruptly. 

"Before?" Aethyta prompted, although she was pretty certain she already knew the answer.

"Before she killed herself," Liara confirmed quietly. “And several others.”

The door opened then, before Aethyta could properly let that sink in.  The kid's guard, Aurelia slid in, closing it quickly behind her.

"Doctor T'Soni," she said, allowing only the barest of respectful nods in the direction of Aethyta and the Il'Danta.  "You need to come quickly.  They're calling a Forum."

"I think they can get along without me, given the circumstances," Liara said primly.  "My mother is badly injured."

"With all due respect, it can't," Aurelia said.  "It's about your mother.  They were actually going to hold it without you."

Liara was on her feet in a hot second.

"What?!" 

Aurelia took a step backwards, raising her hands up defensively.

"Um, yes.  From what I can tell they're, er, um, Rada and Liviana are saying that - and I'm sure they're not right - that she's a traitor and-"

It was Aethyta's turn to round on the girl.

"She's not a fucking traitor," she growled.

"I'm just repeating what they're saying!  I don't believe it! But, um," Aurelia squeezed her eyes shut, wincing, and continued in an almighty rush, "they're also saying that she should be removed from the camp."

"What?" This time the doctor was up on her feet, leaning over onto her desk. "She's in no condition to be moved."

"I'm sorry!  I thought you'd want to know what they're saying!  They want her and the demon girl gone."

Aethyta forced her fists to unclench, with effort.  No good shooting the messenger.  However much she might want to.  She'd have to save it all up until she ran into this Rada and Liviana.  As if they didn't already have enough problems, without people going around and spreading rumours.

Beside her, Liara took a deep breath and let it back out again.

"You're right. I did need to know," she said, calmly.  "Thank you.  Goddess!" She touched her bad hand to her forehead.  "Do you think they'll get enough to call a vote?"

"Everyone's talking about what happened," Aurelia replied cautiously.

"I guess that's a 'yes', then."

The younger maiden nodded. 

"They're gathering down by what’s left of greenhouses."

They left in a blur, leaving Aethyta alone in the office with Il’Danta. Liara hadn't asked for Aethyta to go with her, and Aethyta hadn't offered.  The last thing they needed was for her to go and run her mouth, as she tended to do when she was angry, or to haul off and hit someone, no matter how much certain parties would deserve it.  That Liara evidentially agreed with this particular self-assessment rankled a lot less than it probably should have.

Il’Danta reclaimed her chair, eying her warily.

“What about you?” she asked. “Do you know anything about indoctrination?”

“About as much as you,” Aethyta said.  “You think that’s what it was?”

“I can’t say.  I’ve got no baseline for what it looks like.  Is it mind control?  Is it some kind of neural programming?”  Il’Danta shrugged.  “I don’t even know if it’s supposed to persist without having Reapers around.” 

She paused, evidently deep in thought, and drummed her fingers on her desk. 

“I do wonder though.  All of the abominations they created seemed to either go inert or go mad once that wave of whatever it was passed through.  That would suggest that whatever was controlling them stopped.”

“If it’s not indoctrination, what is it?”

“It’s been a long time since I did a psych rotation, but my initial thinking was that it’s some kind of trauma response.  Matron Falere reported that Benezia appeared lucid but distracted and disorientated immediately prior to the episode.  Her actions during it certainly sound consistent with an episode of psychosis.  Has she had any other periods where her mental state seemed to be altered?  Where she had heightened or absent emotion?  Unusual irritation?  Sleep disturbance?  Depression?”

If Aethyta’s heart could sink any lower, it’d be halfway to Thessia’s core.  There answer to all of that was a resounding yes.  Psychosis sounded almost as bad as indoctrination did.

“Yeah,” Aethyta admitted.  “She had a couple of what I think were flashback things, not too long after we got here.  I thought they’d stopped as she got more settled in and got over the stasis shocl.  She’s been sleeping too much.  And, uh, well, we had a kind of an argument, the other night.  For part of it, she was kind of there, but not, if you know what I mean.”

Il’Danta’s eyes narrowed.

“How was this ‘argument’ resolved?” she asked, the quotation marks slotting neatly around the word.

The back of Aethyta’s neck felt hot with shame, complementing the nauseous feeling in the back of her throat.  Still, she couldn’t bring herself to describe what had happened.

“We’re still on speaking terms, if that’s what you mean.”

Il’Danta drummed her fingers on her desk again.

“Hmm.  I suppose you’ll want to see her.”

“Yeah.”

“And you _are_ on good terms?”

“I think so.  Good enough.”

“I suppose a familiar face won’t hurt if she wakes up.  I’m not expecting that for several more hours though.”

“I can wait.”

“Down the corridor, at the very end.  In the meantime, I need to do some reading, and take a shower, and have a nap.”  The doctor smiled humourlessly.  “Not necessarily in that order.”

Aethyta left the doctor in her office and made her way down the ward beyond it, down between two rows of tiny 'rooms' sectioned off from the otherwise open space by curtains.  Some were open as she walked by.  In one, a trio of girls, one of them missing both legs from the knee, looked up at her over the tile game laid out on the end of the bed.  In another, a teal-skinned matron paced a small circle as she fed a squirming cobalt infant from a bottle, humming an old, old nursing song that made Aethyta's heart clench the instant she recognised it as one she'd sung to her own girls.

Her heart clenched again when she found Benezia, at the end of the ward in a larger 'room' made smaller by the addition of a proper hospital bed and a fair amount of medical equipment.  She was in the last of the four, out cold, some sort of a drip in her arm and a breathing mask on her face.  Behind the mask she was pale as fresh ice, save where her skin was mottled with bruises, blending into the shadows that were her fading tattoos.  Angry purple lines, shining unnaturally behind their coating of medigel, cut across her face, while bandages hid much of her arms.  Her throat, though, was worst of all, one big bruise that extended down past where her skin disappeared under the flimsy surgical gown.  There was an unhealthy wheeze to her breathing behind the mask, even though the back of the bed was so high she was practically sitting upright in it.

Aethyta dragged a chair over and sat. After a second, she started to reach out to take a hand between her own - that's what you did at times like this, wasn't it? - but immediately thought better of it: those elegant, nimble fingers had fared no better than the rest of her, really, bound and splinted.  Instead she found Benezia's wrist, and the pulse point there.  Her skin was cooler to the touch than it should have been, but her pulse, at least, was steady, if a bit faint.  That was something, Aethyta supposed, even if, in all honesty, she'd seen better looking corpses.

"Shit, Nezzie.  I hope she looks _at least_ as bad as you do."

That didn't seem all that likely, though, given that the fucking Justicar and her brat had walked out of here under their own power before anyone had sense enough to send for Aethyta.  The Justicar had beaten Nezzie to within an inch of her life and left her here for other people to patch up.  Typical.

It was then that the thought occurred to her, so absurd but so equally true so that she had to laugh with it.

"Hell, you know, there was a time when I'd've paid good money to see you go up against a Justicar.  Lotta people would've.  Tell me, next time, and I'll sell tickets."

Benezia didn't reply, but she did stir, her fingers twitching and her breathing picking up a fraction.  A minute or so later, her eyes fluttered open and Aethyta found herself holding her breath, uncertain as to who was coming back to her: her Benezia, or the asari who'd fought a Justicar and brought down a building ontop of herself.  Who might still be indoctrinated, or lost all of her marbles.  She let it out again when Benezia fixed her with a gaze that was glazed, half-lidded and filled with puzzled recognition.  Her arm twitched an inch or so in Aethyta's direction.

"'thy..?" she croaked.

"Hey babe," Aethyta replied, unable to stop the tug of a smile at the old nickname. 

She had to wince, though, at the inanity of the question that followed:

"How're you feeling?"

Benezia closed her eyes again and settled back against the bed.  She was quiet so long that Aethyta started to wonder if she'd gone back to sleep.

"Thirsty," she said eventually, heavily.

"I'll see what I can do."

Aethyta found a sealed water bottle in small cabinet opposite the bed and helped her drink from it, small sips, each accompanied by a wince.  When the bottle was half empty, Nezzie closed her eyes again and shifted uncomfortably, breath fogging the breathing mask.

"Hurts.  Everywhere."

"I know babe.  You got banged up pretty bad."

Nezzie shifted again and raised a hand hesitantly to her brow, frowning when it encountered a sealed cut.  She opened her eyes again and lowered her hand to look at it, bandaged across the palm, and then the other, likewise bound, the tips of her fingers and nails all jagged and torn.  Defensive wounds.  Puzzlement turned quickly to confusion, and then went straight through into concern as she found the drip in her wrist.  Full-blown panic bloomed seconds later at the bandages on her arms, her chest, the mask.

_Shit_.  And she even wasn’t supposed to be awake for hours yet.  The doctor was probably off hitting the showers.

"Hey.  Hey, hey, hey," Aethyta said quickly as Benezia started to tremble.  "It's ok.  You're safe now."

Panic was a reaction she'd seen before from someone waking up in a hospital bed dozens of times before, but never one she'd expected from Benezia.   Usually it was some young merc or another, fresh from the battlefield, beginning to realise that there was less of her left at the end of a firefight than there'd been at the start.  Aethyta'd even been through it herself, the first time she'd been shot, certain she was going to die.  Shock could set in all too quickly.

"It's ok," she repeated soothingly.  "It's all over.  You're safe now.  You're going to be alright."

Il’Danta was suddenly at her side, taking in the bed’s monitor at a glance before turning her attention to Benezia herself.

“Matriarch, you’re in a medical clinic.  Nothing here can hurt you.  We’re here to help.”

Benezia ignored them both, pressing a hand to the bruise that was her throat.  The wheeze underlying her breathing took on a threatening rasp, each inhalation come more quickly, sounding more and more forced.

"Nezzie, babe, I need you to calm down," she said with a firm calm she didn't feel herself.  "You took a good knock to the throat, that's all.  It's a bit hard to breathe, I know, but you'll make it worse if you try too hard.”

“Slow, deep breaths,” Il’Danta affirmed.  “In through your nose.”

When Benezia still showed no sign of paying them attention, Il’Danta touched a hand to Aethyta’s shoulder and canted her head towards her ear.

“I’m going to get some _artasipan_ ,” she said, sotto voce. “Keep trying to calm her down.  I don’t want to put her back under if we can avoid it.  We’re too short on supplies, and it’ll only depress her breathing.”

Aethyta nodded, and ducked her head to try to catch Benezia’s eyes.

"Slow, deep breaths.  You'll feel better."

“Can't-"

"Come on, breathe with me."

"-breathe."

"In and out, nice and slow.  It'll come."

Benezia's only response was another strained gasp.  Her back arched, fingers twisting in the bedsheets as she struggled to inhale again, and Aethyta felt her own panic start to rise.  Her lips were already starting to turn black.  And all Aethyta had to help her with were words.

But the words, as Benezia had always said, could rock stars from their orbits.  Benezia had said a lot of things like that, and believed them too.  The right words at the right time could change history.

"You showed me something, once," she said quickly as inspiration struck, moving to sit on the edge of the bed.  She wet her lips. "You told me you used it as a focus when you were having trouble meditating.  There's a place where there's a spring, right?  Clear water welling up from the deep earth."

She closed her eyes as she said it, casting her mind back almost two centuries, to a languid morning spent in the household's small _siari_ shrine.  Benezia had made love to her there for hours, reverently, like it was some kind of sacrament, which Aethyta had kind of supposed it was, given the context.  Later, Benezia had held the link between them open and shown her this.  It had always stuck with Aethyta, on some level - not just the memory itself but Benezia's sense of serenity, of utter contentment.

"It wells upwards, through layers and layers of rock and soil," she continued more confidently, letting her voice fall into a soothing rhythm. "All the way up from the darkness and into the sun.  Can you see it?"

"I can't-"

"The spring rises until it fills a lake.  It's a small one, maybe, but it's cool here.  Calm.  Quiet.  When you close your eyes, you can feel the sun, warm on your skin.  It smells of... grass, and rain, and springtime.  Flowers and things.  When you open your eyes, you can see how green it all is.  The water's so clear you can see every grain of sand under it.  You can hear the wind, and the birds and the animals in the trees.  They come here to drink, deep, and long, and fearless."

She paused, opening her eyes to find Benezia watching her, calmer now, fighting for control.

"The water is life," Nezzie rasped, closing her eyes.  She took in and let out a slow, shuddering breath.

"And we all drink from the same source," Aethyta completed for her.

Aethyta sat back, and this time did cover one of Benezia's hands with her own, waiting silently as Nezzie continued to rein in her breathing.  After another few minutes, Benezia opened her eyes and focused on her.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"It's ok.  Always a bit of a start to wake up in a hospital bed."

“Benezia,” Il’Danta’s cool voice almost made Aethyta start, “do you know where you are?”

Nezzie blinked and looked around the room.

“A… medical facility,” she rasped.  “On Thessia.  A refugee camp.”

Il’Danta nodded, and brought up something on her omni and added a quick note to it.

“Can you tell me your full name?”

“Benezia T’Soni.”

“No middle or secondary names?”

“No.  My mother had ten.”

Benezia managed a smile for a fraction of a second, and a wave relief washed over Aethyta, strong enough to make her glad she was already sitting.  That was an old, old joke.

Il’Danta smiled in return, though it didn’t quite touch her eyes,

“I wish my mother had been so wise: I have seven.”  She turned towards Aethyta.  “Could you excuse us for a few minutes please, Matriarch?”

Aethyta glanced at Benezia, who nodded, almost imperceptibly.  She stepped out of the ‘room’, letting Il’Danta drag the curtain closed behind them for a bit of privacy.   The remnants of adrenaline left her feeling slightly shaky, and the wall she found a few steps further down the corridor was a relief to lean against.  She ran her hand over her head, her crests, and let out a long, slow breath, ignoring the stares of the girls over the top of their game.

That could have gone better.  Could have gone worse, too, admittedly.  Benezia at least seemed to be Benezia, if confused and completely unaccustomed to a bad injury.   Or five.  But she could joke, and smile, and remember something from a better time-

_Goddess_ , if that memory of the spring didn’t bring everything else back with it.  They’d had some really good times together, before things went south.  Not just the sex – though admittedly that had been absolutely _fantastic_ – but everything else that went with being bonded to someone for more than a century.  Lazing together beside the pool or the beach.  Giving each other crap when their skyball teams played each other.  Benezia’s terrible but well-meaning attempts to cook.  Making out like maidens in the back of the skycar, in the janitor’s closet at the theatre, in the gardens, and more. 

Aethyta didn’t know how long she waited before Il’Danta ducked through the curtain.  Long enough for the girls to lose interest in her and focus on their game. She straightened as the doctor approached.

“Well?”

Il’Danta shrugged.

“She’s stable, and doesn’t appear to be a threat to anyone or herself.  As for an official diagnosis, as I said, I need to do some reading.  And find a neural scanner from somewhere.  She’ll need to be here under observation for a while.”

“Well, she doesn’t look like she’s going anywhere under her own power for a bit.”

“Mm.  At any rate, I’m going to go and have that shower before today’s next crisis arrives.”  She extended her arm and touched her omni to Aethyta’s, syncing their contacts.  “Call me immediately if there’s any change.”

Il’Danta left without another word, her shoes squeaking slightly as she made her way back down the corridor.  Aethyta watched her go before ducking back through the curtain, into Benezia’s room.  Nezzie’s eyes were closed when she entered, but they opened quickly at the scrape of Aethyta’s chair, and fixed on her.

"Liara..?" Benezia rasped.

"The kid got, uh, dragged off to some other emergency, but she'll be back as soon as she can."

Aehyta was suddenly thankful that Liara had been called away.  She wouldn't've needed to see all of this. 

"She wanted to be here," she added.

"Tell her… I’m sorry.  Promised I'd do work.  Review... proposal."

"'sure she'll forgive you in the circumstances."

Benezia closed her eyes again and grunted softly, a pained sound, accompanied by an uncomfortable shift.  She let out a long, slow breath.

"Why, Aethyta," she asked, deliberately, each word pointed as an arrow, "are you here?"

"I, uh...  Huh."

Aethyta wet her lips. Even now, she couldn't bring herself to say the words. She shrugged instead.

"I kinda thought that'd be obvious."

"You shouldn't be."

For the third time in half an hour, a cold hand grabbed at Aethyta's heart.

"If you don't want me to be here," she managed after an uncomfortable silence, "I'll find someone else to sit with you until the kid gets here.  I just thought..."

Thought what?  That she had to make sure for herself that Benezia was still alive and more or less ok?  That Benezia might want to see a friendly face when she woke up?  That Nezzie might welcome her being here after what she did the other night?  That Aethyta’s brief nostalgia trip in the corridor would somehow be infectious?

Dumbass.

"Never mind," she said.  "I'll find someone.  You just... You just rest up." 

She started to stand, only for Benezia to reach clumsily towards her, the movement prompting a hiss of pain.

"No.  Stay.  Please.

Benezia dropped her eyes when Aethyta tried to meet them.

"That is… if you wish."

"Alright."

She sat back down.

"I'm sorry," Nezzie said.

"It's ok."

"It's not.  I..." Nezzie took another long, slow breath, as if to steady herself.  Her expression, her eyes were haunted.  "I hurt Falere, didn't I?"

"The de- the ardat-yakshi?" 

"Yes.  And her mother."

Aethyta didn't see any point in lying about it.

"Yeah.  But not that bad, 'far as I know.  She walked outta here with the Justicar before I even got here.  They'll be fine."

"I think… I think I thought… She was…” Benezia frowned, her attention directed inwards.  “She was in my way.  I was… trying to kill her."

"Well, I wouldn't give up my day job if I were you." 

Benezia gave her a look of undisguised hurt and, for the first time in a very, very long time, Aethyta found herself utterly mortified by something that had come out of her own mouth.  She had _not_ meant to say that out loud.  Hell, she hadn't even meant to _think_ it.

_Fuck_.

"I didn't mean that," she said quickly, hoping she only sounded half as flustered as she felt.  Goddess above she needed to be smarter than this.  "I only meant that, well... You weren't yourself, and they’re both ok-"

"No. I wasn't."

Benezia shivered and drew her arms in as close to her body.

"Hey-" Aethyta began, but Benezia cut her off.

"I wasn't myself," she whispered hoarsely.  "You have no understanding of what that means."

Benezia wasn't shivering now, but trembling.  Her eyes caught and held Aethyta’s though, afraid, even hinting at desperation.

"Tell me then," she said.  "What does it mean?"

Benezia remained silent, save for the persistent wheeze each time she inhaled, the almost imperceptible chatter of her teeth.  Aethyta scooted her chair a closer still to the bed and placed her hand atop the blanket, not touching but close enough to Nezzie's body that Benezia could take it easily if she wanted to.

"Show me, maybe?"

That got an immediate reaction. 

"No," Benezia coughed, and turned away from her.  "No.  No, no, no.  I couldn't.  You couldn't."

"Talk to me then," she begged, not sure what else she could do.  "Please.  I can't help you if I don't know what's wrong."

When Benezia turned back to face her, there were tears streaking her cheeks.  But her tone was cold, angry.

"Why _are_ you here?" she whispered hoarsely.  "To gloat?"

"What?!" Aethyta snapped, more than a little taken aback. "Gloat?  Why in right red hells would I want to _gloat_?"

"I left you."

Oh.  She was pretty sure she could see where this was going.  Hadn't expected a lunge straight for the throat though, none of Benezia’s usual subtlety.

"Yeah," she said, not quite able to supress a wince.  "You did.  A hundred and eleven years ago.  But who's counting?"

"I _hurt_ you."

There wasn't really any point in denying it.

"Yep," Aethyta said, trying to keep her tone light. "You broke my damn heart.  Worse'n Oppa fucking Amalos when I was eighty."

"I took our daughter."

Another wince.

"Yeah."

"I kept her from you.  Even when you begged to meet her."

"Yeah."

"She didn't even know your name.”

"Yeah."

“For more than a hundred years."

“Yeah.”

Benezia held her gaze, something of the old determination there behind the tears.

"Why are you here then?" she asked slowly, voice cracking.  "You should hate me."

"You know what?"  Aethyta sat back in her chair, crossing her arms across her chest. "I tried.  "I really did.  Gave it a damn good shot for a full century.  Maybe more.  I mean, you _left_ me, Nezzie.  Without a fucking word.  Without telling me _why_ aside from poxy little note.  And then I tried to hate you again, when we thawed you out.  And you know what all that trying and hating's gotten me?  Sweet. Fuck. All.  'cept maybe some hangovers I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

She sighed and ran her hand over her crests.  She wasn’t the best at this emotional shit.  But sometimes it needed to be done.

"I, uh... My baby girl..." She swallowed, hard, against the sudden lump in her throat.  "One of my girls is dead, Nezzie.  Went out like a hero, but, damnit!" 

She brought her fist down on the side of the bed, prompting a wince from Benezia. 

"Sorry. I mean, look: I promised I'd be there for all three of 'em.  And I fucked it up and Zara's dead.  We won't even have a damn body to bury.  Never will.  I fucked up there.  But I think that makes the other promises I made even more important.  I promised you I'd stand by your side, whatever came.  You leaving me broke our bonding, but it didn't break that.  If I can't keep that promise too, what fucking good am I?"

Benezia looked at her, puzzled, sad.

“You were released from that promise a long time ago.  You owe me nothing.”

“ _You_ released me, maybe.  But I was the one who swore.”

Benezia's eyes searched her face for a long moment, before she turned away, closing her eyes again.  But her hand found Aethyta's and took it, hesitantly.

“I never did deserve you.”

“And I always was a soft touch.”  Aethyta smiled.  “Talk to me.”

Just like Liara, it took a few minutes for Benezia to find the need and the words to speak.  It wasn’t hard to wait her out.

"I think-" she began, and coughed, hard; it looked as painful as it sounded.  When the fit had passed, she whispered: "Please, some water."

"Sure."

Aethyta found the bottle again helped her drink the rest of it, a little at a time.  When it was empty, she carefully clipped the breathing mask back into place, sat back down and found Benezia's hand again.

Another few minutes passed.  Out in the corridor, there was a burst of childish laughter.

"I think..." Nezzie said quietly, looking not at Aethyta, but at some point beyond the curtains.  "I think I died on Noveria. I just didn't know it."

She stopped as abruptly as she'd started, swallowing hard, while what remained of Aethyta's heart crumbled.

"Babe-" she began, trying to find something, any word of reassurance.

"Perhaps not in body, but-"

Benezia stopped again and made a frustrated sound, clearly irked by her inability to articulate her thoughts.  Aethyta knew the sound of old, and knew better than to chime in.  In another time, another place, she might have, offering suggestion after deliberately unhelpful suggestion until Nezzie's amusement won out over her annoyance.

"The world seems unreal at times," Nezzie continued eventually, letting her head fall forward so she was looking down at her lap.  "As though I am a ghost, or... in a dream I can't wake from.  Dream logic.  I think things, I do things that, when I am awake, make no sense.

"And I _know_ it makes no sense." 

She looked up, meeting Aethyta's eyes for the first time since she'd started talking. There was something plaintive in her gaze, and something almost pleading. 

"Sometimes.  Part of me.  Wanting to stop, but I can't make myself wake up.  Again."

A few times, when she was younger, Aethyta'd experienced the bloodrage or Kurinth's Kiss or whatever you wanted to call it for herself, a few times.  The purple haze had descended, and she'd kind of found herself kinda looking over her own shoulder, giving her body advice while it methodically and ruthlessly went about slaughtering whoever or whatever was unfortunate enough to get in her way.  They were like cutouts, or VIs like you'd find in an Arena.  Obstacles.  Things.

Nothing would seem particularly odd about it while it was happening, but the spell would eventually break and the heaviness of the world would come rushing back at her.  She'd sag to her knees, exhausted, covered with gore and with a shotgun so hot it burned to the tough.  Triumphant, but equally terrified at the thought of it happening again.  That the next time it did, that calm, mechanical precision would be pointed in the wrong direction.

"Is that what happened today?"

"Today I was reading.  _Reading_.  Letters." 

Benezia coughed, but waved away the offer of more water.

"It was easier at the start.  Then and now.  It hurt, yes, but pain can be endured.  Or avoided.  Even embraced.  I learned how to.  And even when Sovereign took my... Took-"

Nezzie closed her eyes and drew in another ragged breath, turning her head away.

"When it took my mind and my body from me, it was my choice to... step back into the dream.  Be an observer in my own body.  Watching as I... did things.  Terrible things.  Things I knew I would be ashamed of. But knowing I could step forward and end it.

She was trembling again, eyes welling over in that way your body cried for you, sometimes, when you didn't have the energy left to do it properly of your own accord.

"This has no end. How can it? I don't even know why it starts.  Sometimes I don't even know _when_ it starts." Her voice wavered, growing more distraught by the second.  "It's only when wake that I realise all that came before was a feverdream. Then I wake _again_ , and realise _that_ was a dream too.  Dreams within dreams.  This could be another."

What would it be like, to have to doubt everything you saw or heard or, hell, even thought?  Knowing all the while that you were slowly losing it.  Or having something alien in your head, twisting everything you did until you were unrecognisable to everyone around you?  And having to watch?

It might be enough to break someone, Aethyta thought. Maybe even enough to break someone like Benezia, who'd always had an incredible level of control, and immutable sense of self. 

Maybe especially someone like her.

"This isn't a dream, babe," she assured her gently, resisting the urge to squeeze the fragile hand in hers.  "Much as I'd like it to be."

"How can you know that? How can I?  I can't. I-"

"I know 'cause I know,” Aethyta said simply.  “You and me.  Right here, right now." 

"I wish I could believe you."

"You can," she said fervently. "I wouldn't lie to you.  Not about something like this."

" _You_ wouldn't."  The misery in her voice flashed over into outright fear.  " _It_ might.  It's _cruel_ , Aethy.  It hates us so much.  Death is too good for us."

'It'?  Sovereign.  Had to be.

"Sovereign’s dead.  It's dead, and all of it's buddies are dead, and their corpses are being dumped inside stars.  They can't hurt you anymore.  Or anyone else."

"What if it's not gone?  What if this… this is another lie?  I don't want to go back.  I can’t go back.  I don’t… have the strength."

"I think I can prove this is real,” Aethyta said.  “If you'll let me.”

It was a longshot, given Benezia's earlier reaction to the suggestion, but she had to try _something_ before she worked herself back up again.

"You know me,” she continued.  “You know my mind, better than anyone.  I don't think even a Reaper could fake that."

"No.  I can't.  You'd see."

"I won't see anything you don't want me to see.  I never went looking when we were together, and I ain't about to start now."

“What if it’s contagious?”

She carefully reached out a hand to cup Nezzie's cheek around the breather, drawing her head up so that their eyes met.  Her skin was clammy to the touch and sticky with medigel, devoid of the softness Aethyta remembered.  She could feel the fine tremors racing beneath her hand.

“I’ll risk it.”

"I just want it to stop, 'thy," Nezzie whispered.  "I'm so tired of it all.  I just want it to stop.  But I don’t want to hurt you too."

"Then trust me again.  Just this once.  Let me show you."

Benezia's eyes held hers for a long, wary moment.  Then she reached out a hand to mirror Aethyta's touch against her cheek, the bandages rough against Aethyta's skin.  Aethyta covered it with one of her own, firmly enough to hold it in place but not so tightly Nezzie couldn't pull away if she wanted to.

They'd never needed words before.  But she couldn't just barge in, not here, not now.

"Relax, close your eyes," she began, and made an effort to do the same, taking in and letting out a long, slow breath, trying to remember the next phrase in the sequence a lot of the siarists used.  She'd heard it often enough.  "Let go of your physical shell.  Reach out to grab the threa-"

Aethyta didn't have time to think before Benezia's eyes flashed to black, pulling her roughly into the meld.  She had a fleeting impression of her, of her mind, fractured and defenceless as a child's but still beautiful, before a wall of thought and feeling slammed into her, raw, uncensored, uncontrolled.

_So tired.  So achingly weary down to her very marrow.  She just wanted to sleep and never wake up.  So easy to do it.  Her chest, her throat ached with each breath.  Her pulse pounded in her temples, throbbing behind her eyes.  Even her arms, her legs, her fingers added their own sharp protests at the slightest movement.  All she had to do was stop fighting, and the pain would go.  It would end._

_Would it, though?_ She _was supposed to be here, if this was real._

_She couldn't stop.  Not yet. She'd promised to try, one last time.  To wait for_ her _._ She _was supposed to be here!  Fleeting impression, familiar -_ her _?  No.  Alone.  She was alone.  The promise had been a lie.  She had wanted to believe, so badly, and it was another lie.  She should have known.  It was so cruel._

_Despair._

_Weight on her chest, pressing down, heavier, heavier.  Hard to breathe.  Tingling numbness in her fingers, her toes.  She couldn't see!  Drowning in darkness.  Pain.  Fire in her arms, her legs, worse every second. Needles behind her eyes, driving up into her skull._

_Fear._

_Couldn't breathe!  Something on her face.  Needles in her arm.  Things crawling in her blood.  Lines of tight fire erupting across her skin, bones creaking, cracking, shifting.  It had found her.  Turning her.  It was turning her!  Turning her into one of those_ things _!  It had found her.  It had found her!  Had to get away!  Had to stop!_

_Sudden, sharp pain in her cheek, the taste of blood in her mouth-_

The reflex, drilled into Aethyta back when she'd first caught the attention of High Command, was just enough to break her out of the feedback loop.  Awareness of her own body returned to her in a sickening, heavy rush and a shuddering gasp that filled starving lungs.  Distantly she felt Benezia's hand yank away, saw it begin scrabbling at the drip line, clawing at the breathing mask, her back arching up off the bed.

Aethyta had just enough presence of mind to keep physical contact and stop herself from breaking the link between them entirely.  She couldn't leave Nezzie.  Not like this.  Not feeling so alone and damn well terrified to her very core.

But she _could_ take a moment to _think_ , for once in her life, holding back enough of herself that the raw, uncensored onslaught of Benezia's thoughts and feelings diminished to something she was aware of but not acutely _part_ of.  Think.  She needed a touchstone.  Something calming.  Something that they would both know.  Something only they would know.

When she closed her eyes again and reached back out, Aethyta held the memory of the lake before her, laden with as much detail as she could remember - the sights, the sounds, the smells, the warmth of sun on skin and, above all else, the sense of calm contentment.  She felt Benezia's distress surge forward as the meld deepened, the raw power of a matriarch without any of the control threatening to overwhelm her again.  Aethyta pushed back against it as firmly as she dared, holding the lake, the calm in the forefront of her mind.

For another long moment, they hung in balance, poised at the point of equilibrium, Aethyta unwilling to push forward any further, Benezia unable.  Then Aethyta felt a flicker of recognition and desperation from Nezzie before she and the memory were seized in an iron grip and pulled in.  There wasn't any point to resisting it, even if she'd wanted to; Benezia had always been stronger than her here.  The construct strengthened, grew deeper, the colours richer, the sounds and smells sharper until, with a familiar lurch, Benezia's half of the memory clicked into place, and they were both back, standing by the lakeshore.

_Benezia tilted her face and hands up towards the sun, eyes closed, and breathed in deep.  Aethyta watched her with a fond smile on her face._

_"So, where are we?" she asked._

_"Nowhere that exists," Benezia said, letting her hands and head drop.  "I started building it as an exercise when I was in service to Matriarch Innai."_

_It was always difficult keeping track of the myriad of people Benezia had studied under or worked for.  It'd never helped that Aethyta really only saw most of them at funerals._

_"Innai was the... ambassador, right?" she hazarded._

_"A priestess.  She was in the twilight of her life when she took me into her household," Benezia replied, feeling her heart grow a little sadder at the memory of Innai's life and loss. "I was one of her last pupils."_

_She took a few steps through the soft grass down to the edge of the lake, beckoning for Aethyta to join her.  The shorter asari did, and they wandered down along the shore, hand in hand, footsteps trailing behind them in the soft sand._

_"It's rather taken on rather a life of its own since then," Benezia continued.  "I find new detail every time I return."_

_"Come here often?"_

_"Not as often as I once did.  Usually only if I need a few moment's peace and nothing else is working."_

_"It seems nice."_

_"I've always find it calming.  Of course, that's entirely the point."_

_The lake dissolved and they were back together in the shrine, entwined on the divan beneath the curtained window. The last remnants of the joining lingered between them as a heightened awareness of each other. It took a few seconds of repositioning until they were both certain the other was comfortable and that neither was going to fall off the narrow surface again; Aethyta reached over and down, feeling around on the floor until she found her jacket, pulling it over them as best she could.  It wasn't cold, exactly, but it wasn't half as warm in here as it'd seemed a little while ago._

_"And that will have to do for meditation today, I suppose," Benezia sighed, pressing another kiss to the side of Aethyta's neck.  Honestly speaking, she found herself hard-pressed to regret the way the morning had turned out; in any event, she'd had a strong suspicion Aethyta's request for 'private instruction' had an ulterior motive, and prepared accordingly._

_"Hey, I'm not the one who got all handsy," Aethyta replied, running her hand down Nezzie's bare back for emphasis.  "That was all you."_

_"Your posture was poor."  She gently poked Aethyta's side for emphasis.  "Good form is important."_

_"You've got a good form, alright."_

_Aethyta's wandering fingers found one of the dimples in the small of Nezzie's back and occupied themselves tracing small circles over and around it.  If she lived to be two thousand, she would never get sick of them, Aethyta swore, or of the curve of her hips, the smooth length of her legs, her magnificent ass-_

_"Enough of that," Benezia said, unable to keep all of the amusement from her voice._

_"You sure?"  Aethyta's hand wandered a little lower still, voice dropping to match it, and she felt as much as heard Nezzie's little gasp.  "'more'n happy to return the favour."_

_For a long moment, Benezia was sorely tempted, especially Aethyta pulled away enough to give her that wicked smirk, the one that never failed to make her stomach flutter.  But still, mindful that the day was already well advanced, she said:_

_"I'm sure."_

_"Is that a 'I'm sure you can stop'" Aethyta purred, making one last roll of the dice, "or a 'I'm sure can can ravish me right here 'n now?"_

_Benezia rolled her eyes, and firmly relocated Aethyta's hand to a less risky area.  Sometimes she was quite certain that if Aethy' had her way, they'd never leave the bedroom.  Or wear clothes._

_"That was a 'I'm quite sure you can ravish me later'.  I have things to do today that-"_

_"-don't involve you screaming my name?"  Aethyta half-shrugged when Nezzie bit her shoulder lightly in protest. "Eh, fine, suit yourself.  Just don't say I didn't offer."_

_"I could never, I'm sure."_

_"Mm."_

_Aethyta sighed and shifted carefully, drawing Nezzie a little more tightly against her.  Sometimes it was nice to simply be with someone, to feel their skin against yours or listen to them breathe, slow and deep and sleepy.  Maybe it wasn't the sort of meditation that Benezia preferred, but it worked well enough for Aethyta.  She closed her eyes, and let her mind drift..._

When she opened them again, it was to find herself back in the overcrowded room, Nezzie watching her, exhausted, but calmer.

"'thy?"

Her hand moved weakly in Aethyta's direction. Aethyta covered it, bandages and all, with her own, and returned Nezzie's fragile smile.

"Babe."

Seconds later, Benezia was asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two updates in a week? If you see any flying pigs, please report them to air traffic control. But I couldn't leave things at the last chapter, since all of you have been suffering along with me.


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